


Gutless

by Magdeleine (obsession_inc)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-07
Updated: 2000-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-08 18:40:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 70,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/78408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsession_inc/pseuds/Magdeleine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deaths in a small town, Uber-UST, and a parrot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "The scientific approach to life is not really appropriate to states of visceral anguish."   
> \-- Anthony Burgess

U.S. Highway 165  
Sunday, 5:18 PM

"Three victims, all residents of Tehtonka, Kansas: Lola Marlene Gruber, female, Caucasian, forty-eight years old; Gregory Allen Marks, male, Caucasian, twenty-three years old; Marjorie Elise Bailey, female, Caucasian, thirty-seven years old. Go."

"Both female victims lived alone; Greg Marks had been living with his sister, Aimee Lydia Marie Marks, twenty-eight, manager of the local IGA grocery store. Go."

"No common traits in employment; Lola Gruber was a substitute teacher; Greg Marks was unemployed, with aspirations of becoming an artist; Marjorie Bailey was a secretary for a local temp agency. Go."

"The victims appear to have been killed on a two-day cycle; Lola Gruber died last Monday, Greg Marks died forty-eight hours later, on Wednesday night, and Marjorie Bailey died forty-eight hours afterward, on Friday. The pattern has no apparent connection to the lunar, solar, or astrological cycle, nor to any known occult traditions. Go."

"Very nice, Scully."

"Keep it moving, Mulder, or you forfeit your turn."

"Right. There was no sign of forced entry, no prints on the bodies or the crime scene, no signs of sexual assault or torture, no ritualistic arrangement of the bodies. All three victims were found lying in bed in their own rooms, dressed for sleep, with the lights off. Considering that there were no signs of a struggle in any of the three cases, it's a safe assumption that the victims were asleep at the time they were attacked, and quickly overcome. Top *that*."

"Watch me. The first two victims-- and, from what I have been told, the third as well-- were marked by an irregularly shaped erythemic area covering much of the chest and abdomen, characteristic of a first-degree burn. The internal organs had been removed from the thoracic and abdominal cavities, but the means of removal are unclear. Cause of death was most likely blood loss and shock, possibly manual anoxia. Go."

"... I don't think I can top that one, Scully."

"Well, Mulder, you know the rules. Pull over and give me the keys."

"No no no no, waitaminit, hold on." Mulder stared at the endless Kansas highway, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as he ransacked his memory.

Scully watched him, smiling enigmatically. "Give up?"

"Ten seconds, Scully."

She tilted her head and smirked up at the ceiling of the Crown Victoria, humming the theme from 'Jeopardy.' "Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doooo..."

He shot a poisoned look at her. "Cut it out."

Scully cocked an eyebrow at him, barely suppressing an evil grin. "Time's up. You know how this works. It's my turn to drive."

"No, wait--" Mulder interrupted, holding up a finger. "Greg Marks was gay." He beamed at her. "Go."

She turned a skeptical look on him. "It doesn't count if you make the information up, Mulder."

"I'm not making it up."

She waited for that glint in his eyes that meant he was joking. "It's not in the file."

"I know," he admitted, grinning insufferably in the general direction of a freight train chugging along parallel to the highway. "I talked to a few people. Come on, your turn. Go."

Scully considered this for a long moment, weighing the consequences of pressing this any further. "Mulder," she said, "is there anything else not written in the file that you would like to share with me?"

"Do I win?"

She shook her head, smiling a little. "Down, boy. I'm declaring a temporary time out."

"I don't think that's covered in the rules."

"*Mulder*."

He rummaged around in the door pocket and came up with a new bag of sunflower seeds. He offered the bag to Scully, not taking his eyes off the road.

"No thanks."

"No, no, I need you to open it. I don't wanna crash the car."

She took the bag away from him without a word. Opened it. Gave it back.

"Thanks. Sheriff Volney called me shortly after we were assigned to this case-- I believe you were in that meeting about the Erikson mutilation at the time-- and we spoke briefly, man-to-man."

"Man-to-man," she repeated, arching her eyebrows at him.

He shrugged and popped a sunflower seed in his mouth.

The rental car was remarkably soundproof; the vague mumble of the motor and the wheels against the road did nothing to mask the faint noise of the hull clicking against Mulder's teeth... and the soft sucking sound as he shifted the seed from one side of his mouth to the other... and the barely audible popping as he cracked the seed gently, expertly. And then, that indescribable liquid whisper that meant that he was flipping open the cracked hull with his tongue, extracting the seed--

"The sheriff is a gentleman, Scully. There were some things about this particular case that he didn't feel comfortable writing up in a report."

Scully found that she was still staring at him. Surprised at herself, she shook her head to clear it, and turned to watch the dark green highway signs whiz past.

TEHTONKA - 5 MILES.

She marshaled her thoughts with a firm hand and took a deep breath. Another. The strange wave of arousal faded away as abruptly as it had started.

"I hope," she said, still not looking at him, "that the sheriff's gentlemanly reluctance to breach any sensitive subjects wasn't due to any religious or moral objections he might have."

"Actually, I believe that his reluctance is more due to the fact that Tehtonka is a very small town and practically the entire case file of the first murder was somehow leaked to the public. Everything the sheriff's department knew, the local media knew. And frankly, Sheriff Volney does not strike me as a man who likes pursuing an investigation with his pants around his ankles."

"Nice metaphor, Mulder." Scully glanced over at him.

Mulder took his attention off the road long enough to waggle his eyebrows at her. "Who said it was a metaphor?"

She rolled her eyes and turned back to the window. "I was under the impression that they had the leaks under control."

"Right," Mulder agreed. "The sheriff got the leaks under control by keeping every new piece of information under lock and key. Half his deputies don't know what the other half are doing, and none of them heard the interview with Greg Marks' sister. Volney did that himself."

Incredulously, she cranked back around and stared at him. "How the hell are they supposed to conduct any kind of effective investigation if only one man knows what's going *on*?"

Mulder shrugged. "Like I said, Scully, it's a small town, and the sheriff is a stubborn man. You read the file; Volney's been screaming for federal help since the day after the Gruber murder."

"Yes," Scully agreed dryly. "Since the man refuses to use his own deputies, I expect the next logical step would be to go looking for some federal agents to do the work."

Mulder was shaking his head before she'd finished. "Volney is an arrogant bastard, but you have to admit he had a point. Nobody at the Kansas City field office was taking him seriously. SAC Bauer was ready to come down here and kick his ass personally. Face it, if Volney'd had help when he asked for it, Greg Marks and Marjorie Bailey might still be alive."

She leveled an eyebrow at Mulder. "If he'd used his own officers instead of waiting for someone else to take care of it, they might have found the murderer themselves and we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"Maybe, maybe not. They didn't have that much to work with, Scully."

"I don't have that much to work with, either," Scully informed him, letting a touch of ice creep into her tone. "What else aren't you telling me?"

"The woman who found the first body--"

"Joanne Gruber?" she asked archly.

"Oooh, Scully," Mulder purred, "is the time-out over?" He deftly picked the sunflower hulls from between his lips. That soft, wet sound again. A tiny flash of tongue. Moisture glistening on his lower lip.

Scully shivered, and gritted her teeth. "No," she said, half to herself.

"Okay," he said. "Joanne was interviewed on the Wichita news less than an hour after she was interviewed by Sheriff Volney. Nobody seems to know how they got her name; the reporter, when asked, refused to name her source."

"Great."

"The reporter also got Joanne to admit that she didn't remember whether or not she had personally unlocked the front door of Lola Gruber's farmhouse, although she'd assured Volney that the door had been unlocked when she arrived." He scratched under his chin again. "To make matters worse, a friend of Lola Gruber's told one of the sheriff's deputies that Lola was notoriously random about locking her doors, so there was no way of telling what actually happened."

"Which, if I remember correctly," Scully said, "was when he called for federal help the first time."

Mulder snorted. "Yeah. A lot of good that did him." He popped another seed into his mouth.

Scully looked away, forcibly suppressing the twinge of arousal. A feeling of cold dread flooded her stomach. It was going to be one of those days.

One of *those* days.

Back during the first year that Scully was with Mulder-- with the X-Files, that is-- she'd started calling them Mulder-Awareness Days. They appeared out of nowhere and left just as quickly, a sort of bad hormonal joke that she had to endure as a consequence of being sexually inactive.

She'd had so many of those days by now that she'd jokingly catalogued the various levels of intensity. Level One was a day when she'd catch herself staring at Mulder's ass, give herself a mental shake, and go on with life. On Level Two days, Mulder's oral fixation became the focal point of her existence; she'd find herself hypnotized by the pencil-chewing, the lip-chewing, and, of course, the damn sunflower seeds. Level Three days were tough to live through; she'd spend most of the day avoiding his touch; the slightest brush of his hand would be like touching a live wire. Level Three days, to be honest, tended to send her home to cold showers and pints of Ben &amp; Jerry's.

"Scully?" She turned to find Mulder frowning at her, concern creasing his forehead. "You were spacing out on me for a minute there. Something wrong?"

"No, nothing." She broke eye contact, a warm flush spreading over her neck and chest.

He gave the road momentary attention and looked back at her. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

"You look kind of weird. Are you feeling all right?"

"A little carsick, maybe."

"Need some air?"

"Yeah."

Mulder obligingly switched on the vent, and cool air washed over her. She turned away and found herself watching his reflection in the passenger window, tracing the ghost of his face with her eyes.

She pulled her gaze away with an effort and sighed, shaking her head.

"Better?"

"Much. Thanks."

This was going to be one hell of a long day.


	2. Chapter 2

936 Lakeshore Drive  
5:32 PM

The house was yellow and low to the ground. The man guarding the front porch was gray and built like a tank, sporting a thick steel-colored mustache and a nose like a car wreck. He stepped forward before Mulder and Scully reached the stairs, glowering down at them with copper-colored eyes. "You the FBI agents?"

Scully pulled her ID out of her pocket. "Agents Scully and Mulder," she said, holding it up for inspection; Mulder followed suit an instant later. "And you are...?"

"Sheriff Michael Volney." He motioned with his hand as he turned toward the door. "Come on in. Watch out, the boards are a bit warped."

Scully climbed the three steps with appropriate caution, Mulder following behind. As they reached the top of the stairs his hand settled at the small of her back, just like it always did.

She shivered.

"Cold, Scully?" Mulder murmured, practically at her ear.

She shook her head and sped up, pulling away from his touch.

Volney was just inside, holding the door open for them. "About damn time you two showed up," he growled, puffing humid, salami-scented breath directly into Scully's face. "We've been waiting all day."

Scully tried not to flinch away. "Sheriff, I apologize for any inconvenience, but we took the earliest available flight from--"

"Sorry is one thing, Agent Scully, but I've got lab people all the way in from Wichita." Volney leaned in to emphasize his point, his salami breath fluffing his mustache. "They've been here all damn day, on a Sunday, and every single one of them has a family to get back to, and they can't do that until the coroner takes the body back to Leotie. Which, by the way, she would love to do sometime this week, if you two would just--"

Mulder stepped up behind Scully, the hem of his trench coat brushing against her calf. He was so close behind her, she could feel the heat from his body all along her back. Her skin began to tingle as though she'd stuck her finger in a light socket. "Excuse me, Sheriff," he said, "but my partner and I were called in on extremely short notice. We appreciate the courtesy of keeping the crime scene largely intact for us--"

"I sure hope you do," Volney snapped, taking a step forward, "because I was promised federal assistance in this matter almost four days ago. It took a third murder in this community to inspire the Bureau to keep that promise, and that fact does not make me a happy man. We have better things to--"

Claustrophobia reared up and clutched at Scully's throat. "All right," she announced, pushing out from between the two men. "Sheriff, the file we received didn't include a copy of the witness deposition. If you could brief us on the details of how the body was discovered..."

"Hmph." Volney chewed on his mustache and squinted at her as though gauging her authority. Apparently she passed muster, because the sheriff shrugged and complied. "We got the call about six P.M., Saturday. A friend of Marjorie's, name of Karen Schaeffer, came over and couldn't get an answer at the door, so she looked in through the bedroom window and saw Marjorie just lying there. Called us from her car phone."

"Was the door locked?" Mulder asked.

Volney glared, and Scully remembered the controversy on the news over whether or not the door in the Gruber case had been locked. "Yes," he gritted out. "We checked."

Mulder shrugged and went back to nosing around the dead woman's living room, his hands clasped behind him like a rookie cop who has to remind himself not to touch anything. Volney glowered at him for a moment and turned to face Scully. "No sign of forced entry or burglary. 'Course," he added, indicating the cluttered room with a nod of his head, "God only knows what all's supposed to be in here. Hard to tell."

"Have they determined the time of death?" Scully asked

"Oh, sometime Friday night is what they're thinking. Nine, ten o'clock. Gives me the creeps, truth to tell. Ten o'clock I'm home watching the news and waiting for my daughter to come home from the movies, and across town a woman's gettin' murdered. Coulda been my kid." He blew out a long breath, fluttering his mustache, and cocked an eye at Scully. "You're the medical one, right? You wanna take a look?"

"Of course. You said the body was in the bedroom?"

"Sure is." Volney crossed the living room, waving at a tiny hallway. "Right this way," he said, wrinkling that unfortunate nose. "Might want to hold your breath."

Scully glanced up at Mulder. He looked back down at her, reading the implicit question. "You go ahead, Scully. I'll be there in a minute."

 

Mulder waited until he was sure that Scully wasn't coming back, and took a quick survey of the room. A shelf full of Reader's Digest Condensed Books, a small herd of little china cows, Princess Diana dolls, a set of Elvis plates, throw pillows embroidered with the images of Disney characters, ugly glassware everywhere... it looked like the Home Shopping Channel had exploded.

He walked over to a little curio cabinet and gazed through the glass doors at a collection of thimbles. Each thimble apparently represented a certain state; the little area for each one was neatly labeled with the state's name. Rhode Island was missing.

Continuing past the thimbles, he found himself face-to-face with a blonde, surprised-looking Cabbage Patch Kid of indeterminate gender, hanging from the wall by a small cord around its neck. Mulder's lips twitched upward.

"Hey," he informed the doll, "who says culture in the Midwest is dead?"

"DEAD!"

Mulder jumped back a step and stared at the Cabbage Patch Kid. The Kid stared back.

"DEAD!" the voice repeated, and whistled. This time Mulder tracked the voice by slowly turning toward the kitchen. The kitchen lights were off, the saloon-style doors segmenting the shadows inside. "Hello?" he asked, pitching his voice to carry as he edged to the side of the doorway.

"HELLO!"

Whoever it was -- whatever it was -- it smelled.

He eased his semiautomatic out of its holster, holding it next to his shoulder with the muzzle pointed up, and gingerly pushed one of the doors open, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light.

The same voice emitted a loud scream. "AAAAWK!"

Mulder's eyes finally dilated properly, and that was when he saw the birdcage next to the refrigerator.

A big damn birdcage.

With a big damn bird.

It was a parrot. A gray one, with a blood-red tail. Mulder crossed the room as he holstered his weapon, and stared at the bird. The bird stared right back at him, tilting its head to one side, then the other. Apparently, neither one of them could believe what they were seeing.

Mulder reached out to tap on the cage, took another look at that vicious beak and turned it into a little wave instead. "Hey there, birdie."

"HELLO!" The parrot fluffed its wings and blinked. "WHO ARE YOU?"

Mulder glanced over his shoulder, feeling self-conscious. He considered briefly, shrugged, flipped his ID open and held it up in his best G-man style. "Mulder. FBI."

"MULDER FBI! MULDER FBI!" The parrot let out an ear-piercing shriek and flapped its wings with gusto. "HELLO!" And without further ado, the parrot burst into song. "WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE LIKE A BIG-A PIZZA PIE THAT'S AMORE..."

Mulder's jaw dropped.

"WHEN THE WORLD SEEMS TO SHINE LIKE-A YOU'VE HAD TOO MUCH WINE THAT'S AMORE..."

"Holy cow," Mulder muttered, grinning from ear to ear. "Scully is just going to *love* this."

 

The corpse was female, Caucasian, in her late twenties; about five-foot-four, one hundred sixty pounds. Just forty-eight hours dead. She was dressed neatly in a nightgown made of oatmeal-colored flannel, fuzzy socks, and, as Scully noted when she pushed aside the unbuttoned sides of the nightgown, simple cotton underwear with little rosebuds printed on them. The corpse was lying face-up on the twin bed, mouth slack and tongue protruding slightly, arms at her sides, hands already enclosed in paper bags.

There were no lacerations, no puncture wounds or gunshot wounds, no blood splashed about. There was only one mark on the body: a huge scarlet blemish on the chest and abdomen, running from collarbone to pelvis, fading out along the sides like bloody fingers trailing along the woman's ribcage. The skin colored by this blemish was slightly roughened, the epidermis flaking off at Scully's latex-gloved touch.

What was really intriguing, though, was the appearance of the torso. Scully's first, irrational thought was that someone had already performed the autopsy; the entire trunk seemed to be collapsed, flattened, as though it were a football that had been punctured and stepped on during a particularly rough game. When Scully prodded at the cool skin of the abdomen, it sank beneath her fingers.

The prodding caused a tiny hint of air to ooze out of the corpse. Scully caught a whiff of it and was violently reminded of an autopsy she'd done a few weeks earlier, a near-evisceration. All the organs and their contents had been mangled together into a soupy mix, but the wound had bizarrely suctioned itself back together again and held the goop inside like the world's most disgusting jelly doughnut. This smelled like that-- like bile and gastric acid and vomitus and feces, all mixed together-- but this scent was lower, subtler, an olfactory clue rather than the thing itself.

Scully found herself looking at the dead woman's underwear, at the pink rosebuds. Rosebuds that, if Scully's guess was right, nobody besides Marjorie Bailey had seen since the day they were purchased. Something she thought was pretty, maybe. They looked like something a little girl would wear.

Death and dead bodies, Scully was used to, could deal with; the rosebuds, however, had a kind of mute pathos that struck at her. She blocked it off, drew a wide black magic-marker line to separate the curious pathologist from the horrified human being.

"... just this week," the coroner was saying. "They're all like that."

"Hmm?" Scully looked up, trying to figure out what she'd missed. The local coroner, Jean Denison, was a tall, bony-looking woman, about fifty years old, with a thick Okie accent and big hair. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt under her lab coat, she struck Scully as a woman in denial about her age; to add to that impression, Dr. Denison had been chattering at Scully nonstop, apparently assuming she had found a new best friend.

Dr. Denison was much mistaken. Unfortunately, Scully was in no position to set her straight; she would be dealing with this woman for several days and could not afford to antagonize her at the outset.

"Not a scratch on any of 'em," the coroner continued, leaning in closer. This was not news to Scully, but she let it go. "I can't be positive until we open this one up, but I'm pretty sure the viscera are missing, just like in the others."

"Doctor Denison--"

"Oh, call me Jean, honey." Jean leaned over, lowering her voice confidentially. "I tell you, Agent Scully, I hope to hell you and your partner can help us out, because I have *never* seen anything like this before. Well, except for the two other ones we got stuck in the cooler over in Leotie, you know what I mean, we got a bunch of 'em but that don't make this one any more normal."

Scully looked up at her and forced a smile. Sheriff Volney had left, moments ago, to check on the fingerprint experts who were smoking cigarettes outside the perimeter tape, waiting to begin their work; Scully was stuck with the present company. It was a relief to be without Mulder for a few minutes, but this woman was really beginning to grate on her nerves. "Dr. Denison--"

"Jean, honey; call me Jean." The older woman grinned engagingly at Scully, revealing a set of remarkably large teeth, stained yellow with nicotine.

"Jean." Scully's own smile was making her jaw ache. "Was the nightgown buttoned or unbuttoned when the body was discovered?"

"Buttoned. The pictures are still being developed, but we've got the Polaroids around here somewhere if you want to see..."

"Yes, please." That fake smile was slipping; to cover it up, Scully glanced down at the bedside table while Jean ruffled through an envelope. The table, unlike everything else in the house, was relatively free of clutter; the only things on it were a watch, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and a photograph in a heavy silver picture frame. Curious, Scully leaned in for a closer look at the picture: a candid shot of a handsome man in his late thirties, holding a drink by a Christmas tree. It looked like something from an office Christmas party; certainly nothing that rated such an expensive looking frame.

"These are the ones you want, I think." A pair of Polaroids were abruptly shoved into Scully's line of vision. Startled, Scully looked up; Jean was standing over her, her hand extended in offering. "Well, go on, honey, they won't bite you."

"Thank you." Scully accepted the Polaroids. She gestured at the picture in the silver frame. "Who's this?"

"Oh *that*. That's Jim Taymor, Marjorie's boss."

"Was he Marjorie's..." Scully couldn't think of an appropriately delicate term. "... boyfriend?"

"Her WHAT?" Jean let out a startled shriek of laughter. "No, no, honey, Jim's married."

"Could they have been having an affair?"

"Oh no. No, I don't think so. Not to speak ill of the dead..." Jean's eyes flickered briefly towards the corpse. "... but Marjorie really wasn't Jim's type."

Scully followed Jean's eyes. True enough; even allowing for the discoloration and distortion that had come with death, it was obvious that Marjorie Bailey had never won any beauty contests. The thought made Scully feel bizarrely disloyal, as though she had been listening to unflattering gossip about a close friend. She looked involuntarily at the rosebuds again and shut her eyes.

&lt;*Not to speak ill ...*&gt;

There was a light knock on the door frame; Scully looked up to find Mulder standing just outside the door, his eyes crinkled in amusement. "Scully," he said, "you are not going to believe what I found in the kitchen."

"Are you going to tell me, or are we going to play a round of Twenty Questions?"

Jean's eyes lit up as she spotted Mulder. "Oh, you must have found the parrot." She strode to Mulder, stripping the latex glove off her right hand and extending it toward him for a handshake. "Jean Denison. I'm the Medical Examiner."

"Special Agent Mulder." He shook her hand, although the look on his face told Scully that he was irritated at this woman for spoiling his fun. "I take it you've met my partner. And the parrot."

"Are you kidding? That's all we listened to for *hours* until Sheriff Mike had the idea to put it in the kitchen. Nearly bit him twice, he told me, and it *did* bite that young lady deputy of his. Sharon, or Shannon, whatever her name is." Jean waved one hand in a distracted manner. Fiddle-dee-dee. "Sheriff Mike has been threatening to shoot the damn bird all day and I don't half blame him."

"Sheriff Mike?" Mulder asked politely.

"You met him, Volney. He lets me call him Sheriff Mike as a kind of a pet name, I guess. He acts all gruff, but he's a big teddy bear at heart." Jean rolled her eyes heavenward. "You men. You think if you act all macho nobody'll notice you're human, but what you don't know is that women can tell what's underneath." She hadn't released her hold on Mulder's hand yet, and as her eyes flicked over him she smiled coyly. "I'll bet you're plenty human, aren't you?"

"The jury's still out on that." Mulder's smile was strained. His eyes flickered from the middle-aged coroner towards Scully, his gaze holding hers for a moment, and she fought down laughter. The message couldn't be any clearer if he'd held up a big cartoony sign reading HELP. "Uh... what were you saying about the parrot?"

"Well, we don't know what we're gonna do with the damn thing," Jean continued, still smiling that big-toothed smile at Mulder. "The next of kin lives out of state and won't be here for three days. Can't just leave the bird at the crime scene once we go, but nobody wants to take him home with them. Hell, I can't blame 'em, can you?"

Oh, this was delicious. Scully gave in to that smile and let it spread across her face; if she'd tried to keep it in any longer, her jaw muscles would surely have snapped. Poor Mulder. So uncomfortable. So trapped. She let the situation continue, just to see how he'd manage to get out of it.

"Ahem." Sheriff Volney was standing in the doorway, scratching his ear.

Jean released Mulder and turned her bright-eyed attention on the sheriff. "Well, hello there, Sheriff Mike! We were just talking about you."

The sheriff ignored her, focusing on Scully. "You about done in here? The fingerprint people want to start dusting the place." A pair of lab technicians flanked the big man, peering around him like children examining a stranger from behind their mother. "That is, if we can haul off the body."

All eyes went to Scully.

Scully stood up, peeling off her gloves. "Yes, I'm finished here."

"Good." Volney moved aside and ushered the lab technicians through the door.

Mulder glanced over at Scully and tipped his head towards the door, raising his eyebrows slightly in a question. She nodded slightly and followed him into the living room.

"What do you think?" he asked in a low voice, coming to a halt and glancing back at the doorway. "Any ideas?"

"I don't know, Mulder. I'm going to drive to Leotie with Dr. Denison and get the autopsy done before dinner, so while you have all this free time it might be a good idea to get an interview with the woman who found the body."

He nodded. "Anything in particular you're looking for?"

"You might want to ask her about the victim's social life," she said. "Try and find out about a man named Jim Taymor."

Mulder rummaged in his pocket and came up with a pen; another pocket yielded a crumpled receipt. He smoothed the receipt on one big hand, turned it back-side-up, and poised the pen over it. "Is that just with an A or with an A-Y?"

"A-Y, I think." For some reason she found herself looking at the way the base of his thumb curved into his wrist. The strong line of the metacarpal bones along the back of his hand. The way the muscle along the side flexed as he scribbled the name on the receipt. The texture of his skin.

She blinked, and concentrated very hard on her left shoe.

"... over dinner, okay?"

It dawned on her that he was asking some kind of question. She looked back up. "What?"

"I said, we can compare notes over dinner, if that's all right with you."

"Oh." Scully blinked again. "Yeah. That's fine."

Mulder's brow creased. "Are you sure you're all right?"

Just then, Jean Denison emerged from the bedroom, patting delicately at her hair. "All right, the boys from the removal service'll be here in a few minutes to take care of the body." She focused on Scully. "Are you gonna need a ride? Or..." Her gaze shifted to Mulder, roaming over his body before focusing on his face. "Or is... Agent Mulder coming along?"

Mulder shifted his weight uncomfortably. "I..." He looked down at Scully, desperation in his eyes.

Scully came to the rescue. "Unfortunately, Agent Mulder has to interview Karen Shaeffer tonight, so he won't be coming along."

"Too bad." Jean raked Mulder with her eyes again, far from subtly.

"Yeah," Mulder said, edging behind Scully. "It's a real shame."

Scully smothered a grin. Served him right.

Jean shrugged. "All right, then, honey, I'm gonna go get the car started. It's the blue Chevy."

"I'll be right there." Scully turned to face Mulder, intending to say a quick goodbye and follow Jean out the door. Her plan, however, did not cover her reaction to finding Mulder inches away, his eyes searching her face.

She would have said something, but for some reason she couldn't remember how to breathe.

Oh God. What was he doing?

"Scully." His voice was a low rumble, resonating in her bones. His eyes never left hers as he leaned towards her, impossibly close already and getting closer every moment...

OhGodohGodohGod--

Unconsciously, irresistably, she swayed forward a few millimeters.

Mulder veered slightly to one side, his cheek brushing against a wisp of her hair, his breath caressing her ear for a tantalizing moment before he spoke. "I think we should take the parrot."

It took a moment for the words to work their way through the hormonal haze obscuring her thoughts -- a moment for the realization to kick in that he wasn't going to kiss her, after all; a moment to maneuver her thoughts back on track and for her to assimilate what he'd just said.

She pulled back, staring up at him in openmouthed shock. "Excuse me?"

"I think we should take the parrot with us." Mulder had that innocent look on his face, but she wasn't buying it for a moment.

"Mulder, I don't -- you just can't --" She stopped herself, and took a deep breath. "We're not taking the parrot with us."

"Scully --"

"Forget it." She could feel her face getting hot from embarrassment and anger, and it made her even more pissed off.

"Just listen to me for a minute." He put a hand on her shoulder, distracting her enough to let him continue. "Scully, that parrot may be a witness to the murder."

She waited for him to crack, to smile and admit he was joking. He didn't.

"Mulder. It's a *bird*."

"Not just any bird, Scully, a *parrot*." He grinned, looking insufferably knowing and smug. Scully couldn't decide whether she wanted to laugh in his face or punch him in the stomach.

"I know it's a parrot, Mulder. You already told me that."

"Think, Scully." He squeezed her shoulder to emphasize his point. "This is the only house pet on the planet that can mimic the spoken word. If it heard something on the night of the murder--"

She jerked away. "Do you have any idea how long it takes to teach a parrot to say even a simple phrase? There are tapes to play for them that repeat a phrase over and over and over again, just so their owners don't have to spend all their free time saying 'Polly want a cracker.'"

He grinned again. "Believe me, Scully, this is one smart parrot."

"No matter how smart, the chances of a parrot hearing something a single time and being able to repeat it later are... are infinitesimal." Despite her intentions to keep this conversation quiet, Scully could hear her voice getting louder. She didn't care. "It's just not going to happen."

"Scully--"

"Dammit, Mulder--!"

"MULDER FBI! MULDER FBI! AAAWK!"

Scully's head swung toward the voice in the kitchen, her eyes widening in disbelief. She took a deep breath before she slowly turned her head to look up at Mulder, and found him grinning down at her. His smart-ass grin. The really, really insufferable one. The one he always got when he was right.

Alone in the kitchen, the parrot began to sing again. "DANKE SHÖEN... DARLING..."

Scully chewed on the inside of her cheek for a long moment. "All right," she finally said, her jaw clenched. "I admit... you just... might... have a point."

"Gee, don't go out on a limb for my sake, Scully."

She gave him the eyebrow. "Don't press your luck, Mulder."


	3. Chapter 3

Bob's Diner  
9:47 PM

"Is that all you're going to eat?" Scully watched her partner wolf down a slice of apple pie a la mode. Correction: his third slice of apple pie a la mode. The first piece had arrived at nine-twenty-seven P.M.; it had been gone in approximately thirty seconds. The second piece had vanished in under a minute. By comparison, Mulder was positively dawdling over this one.

He grinned across the table at her. "Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, Scully. This is great pie."

"I thought your usual for pie binges was sweet potato, not apple."

He paused, his fork suspended in midair. "Where'd you hear that?"

She shrugged. "It's a rumor."

He looked at her suspiciously for a moment and went back to shoveling pie into his mouth.

She shook her head in wonder. "I suppose that a lecture about the questionable nutritional value of your meal would be in order, but I get the feeling that you know exactly what you're doing and simply don't care. Throwing caution to the wind, as it were."

"Relax, Scully. We're in a little diner in the middle of Kansas. I'm just sticking with something I'm sure they'll get right-- as compared to, say, a chef salad." Mulder gestured toward Scully's plate. The chef salad-- oil and vinegar delivered on the side-- was woeful-looking. Scully had been picking through it, hoping to find something edible, and was almost ready to give up. "Although I'm sure the parrot will appreciate any leftovers. They do eat that sort of thing, don't they?"

"It's possible. Although I've heard that this one likes a bitten-off finger now and then as a snack."

"Ha, ha. Oh, that reminds me--" Mulder leaned sideways and rummaged in his pocket for a moment. He came up with a key on a clunky metal key ring. "Here." He slid it across the table at her. "Room one-twenty-one in the Mo-Z Inn, right next door. Knock yourself out."

"Thanks."

"The parrot's back in my room. I don't think he's gonna say anything useful without some prompting, so he'll be all right alone." He took another bite of pie. "Incidentally," he said with his mouth full, "Karen Schaeffer told me the parrot's name."

"Do tell."

Mulder held up a finger in a wordless 'wait' as he swallowed. "Guido."

"Nice name."

"Incidentally, Guido has quite the repertoire of Dean Martin songs. Sounds just like Dino, only with a head cold. You get used to it after a while."

Scully gave him the eyebrow. "Mulder, you do realize that Guido will be *your* roommate, don't you?"

"I've been meaning to discuss that with you." Mulder leaned back, the red vinyl of the booth seat squeaking at his movement. "Marjorie Bailey's sister will be here on Wednesday. That means that Guido is staying with us for tonight, tomorrow night, and Tuesday night."

Scully gave up on her salad, sighed, and pushed it aside. "That means that you'll have a smelly roommate named Guido for three days," she said wryly. "Must be a dream come true. Congratulations."

"Yeah. Thanks." He waved the joke aside. "I was wondering if you'd consider trading off nights."

"Forget it, Mulder. The parrot was your idea. You wanted him, you got him, you keep him." Scully folded her arms across her chest and glared at her partner.

Mulder shrugged mildly and took another bite of his pie. The vanilla ice cream had melted somewhat, and a milky drop trickled lazily across his lower lip; he caught it with a single swipe of his tongue.

And, apparently to remove any residual stickiness, he ran his tongue over that spot again.

Scully stared.

Certainly he couldn't know what he was doing to her. It wasn't intentional. It couldn't be intentional. Mulder was preoccupied with his next bite of pie, without an iota of attention being paid to the abruptly aroused woman sitting across the table from him.

This was definitely a Level Two day. God. Nothing to do but grit her teeth and hang on.

"So." Mulder's voice snapped Scully back to attention. "Tell me about the autopsy." She guiltily jerked her gaze away from his lower lip, looking out across the booths of the nearly empty diner. Mulder misinterpreted the gesture, and shook his head. "Don't worry, there's nobody close enough to hear. I want details. Tell me."

Scully sighed. "Mulder, there's really nothing new to tell."

"Then go back over the old stuff. Red patch on the torso?"

She nodded. "Just like the others."

"Wounds, signs of restraints or a struggle?"

"None."

"And the internal organs--?"

"All gone." Scully shrugged. "I took a close look at the other bodies. They're all the same. Completely hollowed out."

Mulder considered this. "And there's nothing different about this corpse at all?"

"They found some kind of dried residue on the outside of the mouth; we're sending a sample to the lab in Kansas City for analysis." Scully's eyes slipped briefly to Mulder's mouth, where a smear of ice cream traced a comma around the curve of his lower lip. She looked away. "That's the only sign of anything outside the body."

"Well, whoever the killer is, he's certainly tidy." He ate the last bite of his pie and waved the empty fork at Scully. "Any damage done to the surrounding muscle tissue?"

"A little here, a little there. The esophageal membranes in particular seem to have been scalded away."

Mulder played with the little pool of melted ice cream on his plate, stirring the crust-crumbs into it with the tines of his fork. "Some kind of acid, maybe?"

She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Maybe." It had been a short autopsy, but a maddening one, and hearing the same questions out loud that she'd been asking silently was giving her a headache. "I doubt it, though; there would have been some third-degree burns on the mouth and esophagus, and unless the victim was anesthetized, she would have put up some kind of a fight before enough acid could be poured down her throat to do this kind of damage." She sighed. "And the tox screen didn't come up with any sign of anesthetics."

"Maybe..." The tone of his voice had changed, and Scully glanced up to see Mulder gazing off into space.

"Mulder," she said, her voice sharp. "What is it?"

He twirled his fork thoughtfully for a moment, then tapped it against the plate with a scratchy clinking sound. "There have been documented cases of partial spontaneous combustion..."

"Oh, no."

"Wait, Scully, just hear me out." Mulder leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, and lowered his voice almost conspiratorially. "Spontaneous combustion, almost by definition, is a phenomenon in which a body burns itself from the inside out. In many cases not only are the surroundings left untouched, but the victim's clothing is neither burnt nor singed, and in many cases parts of the victim's own body remain perfectly preserved."

"I see where you're going with this," Scully said, mirroring his pose and lowering her own voice. This was, after all, a small town. "You're saying that this could be some kind of weird local variant on spontaneous combustion, a variant that only affects the soft tissue of the viscera and not the muscle tissue surrounding it."

"Exactly." Mulder grinned, and waved his hand as though imagining a marquee. "Spontaneous visceral combustion."

Scully took a deep breath. "I have several objections to that theory."

"Fire away." His mouth twisted in a smile. "No pun intended."

She gave him her stop-screwing-around face. "First of all, there have been no proven cases of spontaneous combustion."

He shook his head sagely. "Ah, but there have been a great many cases in which there was no other answer. And when all logical answers have been disproved..."

Scully ignored him. "Secondly, even if I accept that such a thing is possible, there is no physical evidence of any burning. If I remember my X-Files correctly, cases characterized as spontaneous combustion usually leave a... a slag covering of some kind on the ceiling directly above the body. There was no such evidence in any of these cases, Mulder."

"Is there a third objection?" Mulder glanced down at his plate, trailing a finger through the tiny puddle of melted ice cream.

"Yes." She stopped, completely forgetting the third objection as Mulder casually sucked the ice cream off the tip of his finger with a soft, wet sound; she watched, mesmerized, as he repeated the process. Swirling the finger in the melted ice cream. Lifting his hand. Parting his lips...

"Scully?"

"Hmm?"

"What's the third objection?"

For a panicky moment, she couldn't even remember what he was talking about. Hoping to cover, she shook her head and waved a dismissive hand. "It's not important. What'd you find out from Karen Schaeffer, besides the name of the parrot?"

"Some personal information. Karen was supposed to meet Marjorie so they could drive to Leotie for dinner; that obviously didn't go as planned." He shrugged. "Marjorie doesn't seem to have had that many friends. Sort of a recluse."

"Speaking of Marjorie's social life, did you ask Karen about Jim Taymor?"

Mulder pulled a notebook out of his pocket, glancing down at the indecipherable scrawls that lurched across the page. "I asked, but all she came up with was that he was Marjorie's boss." He examined her expression. "Expecting another answer?"

"No, not exactly. Jean Denison already told me about their work relationship. I'm wondering, though, if there was some kind of... personal relationship between them."

Now Mulder looked curious. The notebook went back in his pocket. "Based on what? Something else Jean Denison said?"

"No, actually, I think there might have been something going on that Jean didn't know about." Scully paused to consider her statement. "There is a picture of Jim Taymor in a heavy silver frame on Marjorie's night stand. He's a married man. I believe that there may be a possibility that the two of them might have been having an affair."

"And this relates ... how?"

"I'm not sure yet." Scully shrugged. "Just a lead I think we should follow up."

"Hmm." Mulder studied her thoughtfully. "You have a theory, don't you?"

Scully took a sip of iced tea and tried to ignore him.

"You have a theory, I can tell." He tilted his head nearly sideways, trying to catch her eyes. "Scuh-lleeee." He grinned boyishly. "Come on. I showed you mine, now you show me yours."

She half-smiled at him. "Gee, with a repertoire of sweet-talk like that, I can see why all the girls talk about you in homeroom."

"I got a million of 'em. Come on, Scully."

"This is just a preliminary theory," she temporized.

"Don't tease me. Spill it."

"All right." She closed her eyes briefly, bracing herself. "There was a case in London's Old Bailey in 1954; a pharmacist named Arthur Ford poisoned two women who worked for him. Apparently he put the poison into pieces of candy and gave them to the women; the women died within a few hours and the autopsies showed that the internal organs had been literally burned away by the drug."

Mulder considered it, and nodded. "Sounds like a possible explanation. What was the drug?"

Scully's mouth twisted sourly. "Cantharidin." She looked at him, and waited.

It took a moment for the reference to filter through Mulder's brain, but when it did, his jaw dropped. "Cantharidin? SPANISH FLY?"

Scully just looked at him, expressionless.

Mulder threw his head back and burst out laughing.

"Mulder, it's not that funny."

He attempted to control himself, settled down into a broad smirk, and brought his eyes back level with Scully's. She raised an eyebrow. That was all it took; his lips twitched and all of a sudden he was laughing again. "Oh, Scully," he managed, "you should see the look on your face."

Scully was not amused. "In the London case," she continued stoically, as though Mulder were not still chortling and wiping tears from his eyes, "the pharmacist was apparently trying to seduce the two women, counting on the rumored aphrodisiac effects of cantharidin to assist him in the matter. He took some of the drug himself, although for some reason he survived to be tried for manslaughter."

Mulder finally stopped laughing, although a smile kept threatening to break out around the edges of the fist he had pressed loosely against his mouth. "All right," he said, "let me get this straight. You're saying that this organ displacement or disintegration or whatever it turns out to be could be caused by... cantharidin?" The corners of his lips twitched involuntarily upwards at the word.

Scully sighed deeply. "Mulder, if you're not going to take this seriously, there's really no point in continuing this discussion."

"No, no, I'm listening, I swear." Mulder put on his best attentive expression, lacing his fingers together in a prayer-like posture. "Go on."

She lifted both eyebrows. "If you so much as smile, I'm out of here."

"I promise to be on my best behavior." Straight-faced, he traced an X on his lapel. "Cross my heart."

"Fine." Scully reluctantly returned to the topic. "The corpse I examined today is similar to the ones in the 1954 case in a number of ways; primarily due to the intense congestion of blood in the genital area--" she shot a suspicious look at Mulder, but he remained pokerfaced and wide-eyed, "-- and of course the apparent disintegration of all the soft tissue of the organs."

Mulder continued to watch Scully, and his unwavering attention was starting to make her a little uncomfortable. He had his elbows propped on the table, his hands hovering near his chin-- one hand curled in a loose fist and the other curled around it. His clear storm-colored eyes were focused earnestly on her face, and he was chewing lightly on one thumb. It was making her very uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable was not quite the word to describe it. The right word was flitting behind that brick wall in Scully's mind, she could sense it back there, but she refused to peek through the chinks in the wall to get a look at it.

"There are some differences..." She wished he'd look away. "In the case of cantharidin, there would be necrosis of the esophageal mucous membranes, but in this case the membranes have been completely eaten away." He was still looking at her, his teeth clicking slightly against the side of his thumbnail. Scully was starting to think that this unrelenting stare might suffocate her. "If it was a traditional form of cantharidin poisoning, it would have taken over an hour for the victims to die, and we probably would have found some bloody vomitus nearby, possibly bloody fecal matter, something. In this case, however all four victims seem to have had an instantaneous death with no sign of a struggle or a drop of fluid misplaced."

Mulder continued to look at her.

"I'm finished, Mulder."

"Can I ask one thing?"

"Please do."

He leaned his chin on his hands. "Where would someone find Spanish fly in Tehtonka, Kansas?"

Scully shrugged. "Maybe they didn't find it in town. Maybe they drove to Wichita. Maybe somebody has an uncle who knows somebody in the business. That's not the point, Mulder."

"I just thought it might come in handy to know where to shop." His eyes were full of mischief. "Unless you by some chance have a little baggie of cantharidin tucked away in your suitcase..."

"Mulder."

"I'd lend you some of mine, but I forgot it in my medicine cabinet back in DC. Darn the luck--"

"All right, Mulder; that's it." Scully slid out of the booth, her heels slamming firmly on the floor; she pulled her trench coat off the seat and shrugged into it with quick, brisk movements. "Obviously you're not able to take this seriously right now. I have things to do. I'm going to go do them. I will see you later."

"Scully--"

She caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass door as she walked out, but she didn't look back.

 

The Mo-Z Inn  
Room 121

It was a room much like any of the thousands of others she'd slept in; beige paint, rust-brown carpeting, a thin machine-quilted synthetic coverlet on the bed almost exactly matching the color of the carpet. An empty bookshelf hung sadly on the wall between the window and the bed, gathering nothing more literary than dust; a battered dresser with a television set bolted to it was jammed up against the opposite wall with a flat-cushioned excuse for an armchair next to it, ensuring that nobody inclined to sit in the armchair would actually be able to see the television.

The room had the stuffy smell of rented air, of faint cigarette smoke and other people's bodies and the leathery smell of luggage. Scully hated that smell. She'd smelled it too often.

The night sky rumbled again, lacing the heavy clouds with flickering lightning. There was no rain, and almost no wind, although a sudden cold gust rattled the windows as Scully opened them, hoping enough of a breeze would circulate to freshen the air in her room. With any luck, it wouldn't rain for at least another hour, and she could have fresh air before she went to bed.

She toured the room as if it were a crime scene, turning back the tightly tucked covers on the bed to examine the sheets, rubbing the edge of her shoe against the grain of the carpet to check for insufficient vacuuming. Not bad. The bathroom seemed clean; it smelled of bleach, but bleach was much preferable to mildew. She ran the water in the shower experimentally, and found that the water pressure was strong and the shower head was adjustable. Not bad at all.

There were, unfortunately, no towels.

As Scully sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, explaining the towel situation to the guy at the front desk, she noticed that something else was missing. Her luggage.

Great. Mulder had dumped her luggage in his room right along with his, again.

She hung up and walked over to the connecting door. She hadn't heard him come in, but she knocked, just in case.

"COME IN!"

It didn't sound like Mulder. Scully frowned at the door and opened it anyway.

The parking lot lights beamed through Mulder's open blinds, turning the room into a black-and-white cartoon sketch, shaded with gray. Scully spotted her luggage sitting next to Mulder's bed and grabbed it in a hurry, feeling strange about being in his room in the dark.

There was the rustling, pumping sound of wings flapping. "HELLO!"

She turned and saw the parrot for the first time. Gray, like the rest of the room. He leered at her, his beady little eyes glinting.

"Hello, Guido."

Guido bounced up and down on his perch like a feathered survivor of the club scene. "VOLAAAAARE! OHHHH-OH! CANTAAAAAARE! OH-OH-OH-OHHHH!"

"That's just great," Scully sighed, and left the room.

 

"Housekeeping!"

Scully opened the door. The bosomy woman standing outside was dressed in jeans and a uniform tunic, with long hair hanging in a thick braid over one shoulder. The scratched metallic name tag over her heart informed Scully that "Housekeeping" was named "Mae."

Mae held up a stack of white towels. "Here ya go. Sorry about the wait."

"No problem." Scully held out her hands to accept the towels, but Mae didn't hand them over. Instead, she nodded towards Mulder's room.

"Do you want to complain to management about the noise?"

"Do I--?" Scully realized that Guido was still serenading the public next door. Astounding. She was already used to the damn bird. "Oh. No, that's okay."

"Look, it's none of my business, but everyone else has been complaining." Mae leaned against the door frame with the air of a woman in the mood to gossip. "Jeff-- that's the manager-- says he's going to call the police if we get one more complaint about that parrot."

Scully, who was *not* a woman in a mood to gossip, pulled her ID out of her pocket and flipped it open at eye level. "Believe me," she said, in a tone that brooked no argument, "the police don't want the parrot, either."

Mae's eyes widened. "Ohhhh," she said, nodding sagely. "So the gorgeous guy with the parrot..."

"He's my partner." Scully snapped shut her ID, tucked it back in her pocket, and held out her hands for the towels. Again, Mae did not appear to notice.

"Ohhh. Look, it's none of my business, but ..." Mae leaned in, her sharp eyes snapping with mischief. "How on earth do you sleep at night with a man like that in the next room?"

"A couple drops of chloral hydrate will do the job every time," Scully said, straight-faced, and took the towels from Mae. "Thank you..."

"You need anything else, just call the front desk."

"Yes, thank you, I'll do that." Scully waited politely for Mae to leave.

Mae did not appear to be leaving. She leaned forward a little, pitching her voice to a low, confidential tone, dripping with innuendo. "And if your *partner* needs anything--"

Scully shut the door.

 

She stood under the water, head down, one hand on the wall. She hadn't shampooed, hadn't soaped up the washcloth-- very frankly hadn't dared to touch herself, convinced that the sensation would conjure up a fantasy of her partner's hands on her. Just standing there, letting the cold water flow over her, waiting to stop feeling as though her scalp was boiling.

Mulder.

Mulder sucking ice cream off his finger, Mulder licking his lips, Mulder watching her intently from across the table as that gorgeous mouth worked on his thumbnail. Mulder... Her eyes drifted shut as she involuntarily imagined that mouth on her face, her lips, her breast... her body's reaction to the fantasy was visceral and immediate, and she wrenched herself out of it with a stifled moan.

Scully leaned her forehead against the cool tile and closed her eyes.

God, that man made her *ache*.

The cell phone rang twice before it truly registered on Scully where the noise was coming from. "Oh, hell." She turned off the water and struggled out of the shower, dripping everywhere. Mulder. What was he calling for? Did he expect her to come back and pay her half of the bill? She wrapped a towel around herself and dried her hands on it as she padded out of the bathroom to search through her discarded clothing for the phone.

She snapped it open and held it slightly away from her head, afraid that her dripping hair would short out the phone. "Scully."

"Agent Scully, this is Sheriff Volney."

"Yes?" She frowned, puzzled; this was not the voice she had been expecting and it took a moment to change gears. "What is it?"

"You might want to find your partner and get out to one-seventeen Franklin Street."

"What?" Scully was having a little trouble hearing the sheriff with the phone four inches from her ear. In Mulder's room, Guido burst into a spirited rendition of 'I've Got You Under My Skin.' "Sheriff, could you repeat that?"

"I said you might want to get out here. One-seventeen Franklin. There's been another murder."


	4. Chapter 4

117 Franklin Street  
10:25 PM

Joshua Schmidt was about eighteen years old, tall, dark-haired, and pimply. And dead. Really, most sincerely dead. Like Marjorie Bailey and the two victims before her, Joshua was face-up on his own bed, staring at the ceiling, his jaw slack and mouth agape. Like the other victims, he was dressed conservatively for bed -- in this case, a faded t-shirt and a pair of flannel pajama bottoms. Joshua's mother, father, and two younger sisters were huddled outside the bedroom door, too stunned and confused for tears. They stubbornly resisted the awkward efforts of the two deputies to move them to a more convenient location, like the living room, so that the body could be examined without further trauma to the family.

Mulder hated situations like this. On the one hand, he felt an instinctual need to protect the grieving family from seeing Joshua handled by impersonal hands. On the other hand, it was after midnight, he had been up since five A.M.-- four, if he accounted for the different time zone-- and his body was clamoring for sleep, exhaustion weighing him down and rooting his feet to the floor. Under any other circumstances, he would have tried to help the deputies soothe the family and guide them away, but the weary ache in his head was making him impatient with their grief and he couldn't think of any other words than Will You Just Get The Hell Out Of Here, Please?

Not the kind of thing the FBI advised in these situations. But hedging around like this, standing in a corner with your thumb up your ass because the goddamn family had some kind of religious reason for not letting the corpse out of their sight-- that couldn't be proper etiquette, either.

If he didn't know better, Mulder would have sworn this was the guest bedroom, rather than the lair of a high school senior. It was spotless. No posters. No sports memorabilia. The dirty laundry was neatly stowed in a wicker basket in the corner by the dresser. One small bookshelf, with a few lonely books on it. The desk was uncluttered, except for a worn grammar textbook and a pad of paper. There was a crucifix hanging on the wall above the bed, and a well-thumbed Bible with a red faux-leather cover on a tiny bedside table.

The place gave Mulder the creeps. When *he* was eighteen, the only time his room had looked half this clean had been when company was coming over and his mother had roused herself enough to decree that This Mess Must Go. Joshua Schmidt's room didn't have the polished feel of order imposed by a mother's hands; this room felt almost sterile.

Scully was standing near the bed, speaking with Jean Denison in a low voice. Mulder couldn't hear the conversation-- he was keeping well away from Dr. Denison, thank you very much-- but Scully's body language and gestures told him that she was talking about the similarity of this corpse to the others they had seen. He could also see that Scully didn't like Jean very much, although she was keeping it well hidden under her usual air of cool professionalism; to Mulder, though, it was obvious from the angle of her spine, the faint line between her eyebrows, the occasional unconscious clenching of one fist, and the impatient way she pushed her hair back from her eyes.

Her hair. The rumpled state of Scully's hair made Mulder grin, despite his efforts to keep a straight face. She hadn't said anything about it, but she must have been just out of the shower when Volney called her; her hair had still been only towel-dry when she'd dragged Mulder out of the diner. It had been brushed down flat against her skull, but when Scully's hair air-dried, it had a mind of its own-- defying any attempts at control, curling every which way and refusing to stay neatly tucked behind her ear. Hair that was just as stubborn as the woman beneath it. Perfect.

Sheriff Volney had finished taking the crime scene photographs almost ten minutes ago; he'd been more leisurely with the back-up Polaroids, snapping shots of every square inch of the room. He stood near the desk, fanning himself with the latest couple of developing prints, glancing at them every once in a while to check their readiness. He looked every bit as itchy and ill-at-ease as Mulder felt.

Mulder didn't like Volney. The man was grumpy and stubborn and too damn self-important. For some reason, his direct copper-colored stare and southern-Kansas drawl made Mulder feel like he was ten years old again, sitting on the bench outside the principal's office: defensive, keyed-up, and irritated at himself for feeling that way.

Then again, the family showed no signs of budging, and Mulder couldn't go talk to Scully while Jean Denison was over there. God, no. The only thing left to do was to strike up a conversation with Volney.

Mulder glanced over at the sheriff, making eye contact. Volney raised one bristly eyebrow-- an expression Mulder wasn't used to getting from anyone but Scully, anymore-- and tilted his head to one side in invitation. Mulder crossed to the desk, standing next to Volney; both men kept a casual eye on the proceedings in the hallway.

"Poor kid," Mulder offered.

Volney made a snorting sound beneath his moustache. "Yeah, poor kid," he muttered, pitching his voice low. "Home schooled."

He seemed to expect some kind of response to this; Mulder nodded sagely and made a noncommittal "hmmm."

"Wouldn't'a been so bad," Volney continued, "except that this bunch doesn't know what the hell they're doing when it comes to education. Ninety percent Jesus and ten percent everything else. Damn near nobody raised like that has a snowball's chance in hell of coming out normal." He shook his head, a frown drawing long vertical creases on either side of his mouth. "Poor kid."

Mulder couldn't think of a thing to say. He settled for nodding again, feeling slightly foolish. Across the room, Jean Denison raised her hands in some kind of surrender and left the room, rubbing the back of her bony neck. Scully turned back to the corpse, scribbling in that little notebook of hers.

"You religious, Agent Mulder?"

"No, not really."

"Hmm." Volney blew air through his moustache and considered this. "I'm Methodist, m'self. Mostly a Sunday morning Christian, if you catch my meaning. I got nothing against people practicing whatever kind of religion they want, but these kind of cloistered Bible nuts get me a touch concerned. Don't talk to anybody else, won't send their kids to school, all that jazz-- and that damn crazy uncle Fred of theirs comes to every damn city council meeting and rants about how Jesus is gonna come down from heaven and smite every last one of us if we build that new dike to keep the river from flooding the damn baseball field." He cast a surreptitious look in Mulder's direction. "That sort of shit makes me want to start checking out the place for a secret cache of Uzis, know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah." Mulder took another look around the Spartan room, imagining the life that Joshua Schmidt must have led. "I've seen that kind of thing a few times." For a moment, a memory of twisted lines of bodies at a Tennessee farm flashed behind his eyes; he dispelled it with a shake of his head. "It... never ends well."

Volney nodded slowly, gazing vaguely toward the door, his lips pursed slightly in a soundless whistle. It almost seemed as though he hadn't heard Mulder at all, but when he turned his head a moment later there was a gleam of something approaching respect in his eyes. "Nope," he said, and turned back to the door.

"GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME!!!"

The voice was unbelievably loud in the tiny room, echoing like the roar of an avalanche. Mulder's gaze shot toward the doorway. The two deputies were struggling with a skinny short man in his late fifties, bald except for a few colorless puffs around his ears. He was wearing polyester pants and a yellowed dress shirt with perspiration stains that showed as he brandished a Bible over his head with both hands. "DO NOT HINDER THOSE WHO WORK FOR THE LORD THY GOD!"

Volney sucked in his breath on a mild obscenity and made for the door with surprising speed, his head lowering like a bull charging a red cape. "Fred, will you cut it *out*? This is not the time for your horsecrap!"

The little computer in the back of Mulder's brain sprang to life, spitting out the answer to this mystery man's identity. Fred. Crazy uncle Fred, the one who came to meetings and yelled about smiting. This certainly promised to make the proceedings more interesting.

Fred's yelling took on a sing-song quality, the kind that Mulder identified with televangelists and auctioneers. "For behold, the day COMeth, BURNing like an oven, when ALL the ARROGANT and all the evilDOERS will be stubble, the DAY that comes shall burn them UP, says the LORD of Hosts--" The rest of the family shrank away, inching towards the living room; it seemed that the appearance of Crazy Uncle Fred moved them more than all the efforts of the two deputies.

Volney held up a warning hand. "Fred, if you don't settle down, I'm gonna have to get you locked up again!"

Fred was starting to foam a little at the mouth. "The Lord will SMITE thee with the boils of EGYPT, and with the ULCERS and the SCURVY and the ITCH, of which thou canst NOT BE HEALED! We must PURIFY the boy, CLEANSE him of the unclean spirit--"

To his credit, Volney did attempt to handle the man gently, but after Fred twisted away and brandished the oversized Bible at the sheriff, Fred ended up pinned against the wall, one of Volney's big hands holding him in place. "Now Fred," Volney chided, "I warned you. It looks like another spell at the hospital for you, now doesn't it?" He slapped a pair of handcuffs on Fred, gesturing down the hall in disgust. "You know the drill, boys. Take him away."

Fred continued to hold forth as he was led off. "The unclean SPIRIT is the ENEMY OF THE LORD. We must CLEANSE the boy lest he lose his IMMORTAL SOUL to the agent of SATAN, to the succubus LILITH--"

Mercifully, Fred's voice faded as the distance increased. Mulder exchanged a glance across the room with Scully, who raised her eyebrows in an amused facial shrug. He rolled his eyes in the direction of the hallway with a wry grin, and was rewarded for his efforts with a rare half-smile from his partner.

"Goddamn Fred." Volney absent-mindedly wiped his hands on the sides of his pants, as though just touching the man had put him at risk for a communicable disease. "Damn crazy lunatic sonovabitch. Of all the times for him to sound off, I swear."

Scully cleared her throat delicately, drawing Volney's attention. "Does this happen often, Sheriff?"

"Often enough. About once every month or so we have to haul him off to the psych ward at Bryan Memorial; the family goes up and gets him out once he calms down." Volney shrugged philosophically. "Nothing much we can do about keeping him there, and we can't incarcerate him forever just on account of being a public pain in the ass, so..."

"What--" The word came out of Mulder's mouth involuntarily. He was vaguely aware of everyone turning to look at him, but the question forming in his mind took up most of his attention. "What did he mean when he said that he needed to *cleanse* the boy?"

"Oh." Volney looked uncomfortable. "That was before you got here. Fred started raving about being attacked by a demon and staving it off with a prayer and some cross-waving; I guess he thinks that's what happened to Joshua, too." Volney shook his head. "Everyone in this family is a little cracked, but Fred takes the cake. I'm not too surprised that he's messed up about the kid dying; those two were good buddies. Josh was even starting to act a bit like Fred, last I heard."

Scully had her professional face on again, frowning faintly. Her hair spoiled the hard-boiled image, though; it was difficult for Mulder to take Scully seriously when she had to keep swiping a particularly stubborn curl out of her eyes. "Act like him? In what way?"

Volney seemed to give this question a great deal of thought. "Just certain things he'd do. Mannerisms. Nothing you can really lay a finger on, it's just that Fred tends to make people feel a bit disturbed, and lately Josh's been much the same way, not to speak ill of the dead... Sort of a spooky kid, real geeky."

Scully looked over at Mulder, tipping up an ironic eyebrow. Mulder ignored her.

Volney hesitated, chewing on his moustache, then added, "The kid was following my daughter around, past couple weeks."

"Do you mean he was stalking her?" Mulder was still a little stung from the 'spooky geek' comment and having a hard time picturing this kid as the stalking kind. "Are you sure that he wasn't just trying to ask her out on a date?"

The sheriff fixed Mulder with an icy glare. "He was ghosting around after her for more'n a month, mister. She was scared. I finally had to step in a few days ago and tell him to leave her the hell alone."

"Sheriff?" One of the deputies was standing hesitantly in the doorway. "We have a problem."

Volney made a noise halfway between a chuckle and a groan. "Great. What now?"

Jean Denison appeared beside the deputy. "Sheriff Mike--"

The sheriff gave Mulder a long-suffering look. "What *is* it, Jean?"

Jean balled her hands into fists. "They don't want to let us do the autopsy." Mulder half-expected her to start hopping up and down and shooting steam from her ears like Yosemite Sam.

Scully blinked. "I was under the impression that the medical examiner is required by law to investigate any death under unusual circumstances. Is that not the case in Kansas?"

Jean shook her head vigorously. "No, no, law's the same, we're on safe ground there, it's just these people don't take kindly to having their dead ones cut open. Religious objections."

Volney stroked his moustache. "They don't have a legal leg to stand on, but they can make a big stink about it." He tossed his hands in the air, surrendering. "Aw, hell. I'll go talk to them."

"Need any help?" Mulder offered, automatically.

"Nah," Volney said, "you two stay here. I'll be right back." He gave the ceiling a pained look and exited; Jean and the deputy followed closely behind him like baby ducks toddling after their mother.

Mulder waited until they'd rounded the corner before he smiled at his partner. "So, Scully, whaddaya think of Uncle Fred?"

"Obviously delusional." Scully crossed to the bed, snapping on a pair of latex gloves. "Reminds me a little of someone I know."

"Frohike?"

"Close, but not quite."

"Maybe it's Skinner." Mulder followed her across the room, enjoying the banter. Scully's bad mood seemed to be over, thank God. He mentally crossed his fingers and hoped it would last.

"Hmm, no, but he *is* in the FBI ..." Scully smiled faintly as she checked through the black bag that Jean had brought in from the coroner's van. "Aha." She brought out a wicked-looking pair of steel scissors and deftly cut the t-shirt off the body of Joshua Schmidt. As she peeled back the thin pieces of cloth, Mulder got a good view of the vivid red mark covering most of the sunken torso. Scully pressed gently below the sternum; the skin sank beneath her fingers like the stretchy rubber of a deflating balloon. "He's still warm. I'd say he's only been dead an hour or two. I'll have a better idea once I get the rectal temperature."

"That's okay," Mulder said hastily, warding off the idea with one hand, "I don't really need to know."

Scully moved up to the face, pulling back one eyelid. "Cornea's clear ..."

Mulder had always prided himself on having a strong stomach. After all, he'd faced down Eugene Tooms in a mess of bile; he'd seen people who had been devoured by mutant fungi; he'd seen so much blood in his career that it almost failed to surprise him anymore. For some reason, though, watching Scully finger a dead boy's eyeball was making him feel a little queasy.

Ugh.

"Mulder, take a look at this." Scully pulled the corpse's mouth open, peeling back the top lip with one hand and pointing with the other. There was a kind of cloudy slime clinging to the teeth, pooling a little around the tongue. "That looks like the same residue we found around Marjorie Bailey's mouth." She made a little face. "Except this is much fresher."

"Fresh, not frozen. Just like you get at the farmer's market." Mulder turned his attention to the ceiling, hoping to see some kind of stain or at least a discoloration directly above the bed; no such luck. So much for spontaneous combustion.

This close to the corpse, though, Mulder was starting to smell something. It wasn't a familiar crime-scene smell -- blood, or rotting flesh, or even excrement -- this was something else. Two something elses, in fact; a ripe, sticky smell and a scent that he had dismissed vaguely as the lingering scent of dinner. Baked ham, or something like that, except that this smell was stronger near the corpse.

He looked again at the angry red mark on the body. Not baked ham; baked Joshua. The thought made Mulder feel even queasier. He was too tired for this shit; he just wanted to go back to the motel, get some sleep, and think of a new theory in the morning.

Scully continued her cursory examination of the corpse, which, based upon the words 'rectal temperature,' was nothing that Mulder particularly wanted to observe. To distract himself, he started snooping around the room as discreetly as possible, not touching anything out of respect for the integrity of the crime scene. There wasn't much to see. Hell, it looked like the kid had even *dusted* regularly.

This was no fun at all.

"Air temperature, seventy-one degrees Fahrenheit; body temperature... ninety-four point five. Time of death was no earlier than eight-thirty or so ... You know," Scully said conversationally, "this looks pretty routine. I think if I get a good sample of this substance in his mouth, I could probably let Jean do the main part of the autopsy by herself."

"Oh, really?" Mulder had half an eye on the grammar textbook. Diagramming sentences. Christ, what a way to spend your last evening on earth.

Scully pushed her hair out of her eyes delicately with one wrist. "She's capable of handling it. I could check in on it later. It'd give me a chance to sleep in a little instead of being up to my elbows in a corpse at six in the morning." She did something to the body that produced a strange squishy sound; Mulder kept his eyes on the textbook. There were some things that man was just not meant to know. Scully didn't seem to pay any attention to the noise; she kept on talking as though it hadn't happened. "I thought we could do an interview with Jim Taymor. Maybe track down Sheriff Volney's daughter, too, while we're at it, and get the story on what sort of 'stalking' Joshua did."

Whatever the noise had been, it did not repeat itself. Heartened by this, Mulder ventured back near the bed. It was a plain bed with a solid wooden headboard, running clear to the floor; Mulder idly glanced behind it. "Well, hello there..." he said, half to himself, and knelt down to take a   
better look.

"What is it?" Scully, still engrossed in her work, cocked an eyebrow in his   
direction.

"Looks like good old Joshua had a hidey-hole behind the bed." Mulder pulled a pair of latex gloves from his suit pocket and snapped them on. He reached between the headboard and the wall, easing out the object of his attention-- a Tehtonka High yearbook with a dark green cover. He held it up triumphantly. "Jackpot."

"A yearbook," Scully said flatly, unimpressed. "He's a high school student, Mulder. High school students have been known to have yearbooks."

"Ah, ah, ah..." Mulder wagged a finger at her. "*Normal* high school students have yearbooks. Joshua Schmidt was home schooled. Explain to me why a home schooled student would have a yearbook for a school he doesn't attend? Better yet, why does he have it hidden behind his bed?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I," Mulder murmured, checking the yearbook over. The spine was broken towards the back of the book, rather than the middle, where one would expect it; he experimentally opened the book, letting the pages flip open along the break. Black and white pictures of last year's junior class smiled up at him in all their teenage gawkiness. He scanned the names, hoping something would pop out. "Wait a minute, maybe I do know."

"What?" Scully asked, walking over to him. She pulled off her gloves and pushed back that curly strand of hair with one talcum-dusted hand. "What'd you find, Mulder?"

He extended the yearbook toward her in explanation. She sighed, pulled a fresh glove out of her pocket, and snapped it on, accepting half the book in her gloved hand so that she and Mulder supported the weight of it together, as though they were sharing a hymnal at a church service.

"Check it out," Mulder said, tapping at a black-and-white picture of a pretty, dark-haired girl. The caption off to the side gave her name: Amber Volney.

"It could be a coincidence."

Mulder ruffled through the pages of the yearbook. He stopped at a worn, dog-eared page, pressing the book open, and scanned the pictures. "Here." He pointed at a full-body picture of a dark-haired cheerleader in mid-jump, pompoms flying-- Amber Volney. A few pages later, another dog-eared page; this one had a shot of Amber Volney in the school play. The next dog-eared page had a shot of several girls posing for the camera together; despite the fact that the caption did not give the names, the face of one girl was completely familiar-- Amber Volney. There were three or four other pages in the book that were dog-eared from repeated viewing; a quick check confirmed that Amber Volney was the only girl who was on every page.

"Well, there you go," Mulder said, grinning at Scully. "Looks like Joshua was in luuuuve."

Scully raised an eyebrow. "I somehow doubt the sheriff will see it that way."

"Scully, are you mocking a young man's tender feelings for the girl of his dreams?"

"No," she said, "but I believe the word 'obsession' fits those tender feelings to a 'T.'"

The little computer in the back of Mulder's brain was still chittering away, but he was so tired that it took real effort to focus on what it was bringing up. Pictures. Obsession. Pictures at the bedside. It all coalesced so suddenly, he could almost hear the *click*. "Hang on, didn't you say that Marjorie Bailey had a picture beside her bed?"

Scully looked up at him. "Yes, of her boss ... Jim Taymor. What about it?"

"What was it you said-- you thought they were having an affair?"

"Well..." Scully twisted her mouth, her typical reaction when Mulder had caught her in the middle of a half-formulated theory. "I said that it was possible. Jean doesn't seem to think so, but secretaries have been known to become... infatuated with their superiors, and that might be the case with Marjorie and Jim Taymor."

"So..." Mulder looked down at his partner's rumpled hair and lowered his voice to a more flirtatious tone. "We could be talking about another case of unrequited love."

"Could be..."

The hell with it, this was a golden opportunity. Mulder let his voice slide even lower, into a dark chocolate rumble. "Or possibly just... unrequited lust."

Scully went abruptly still, her eyes narrowing. She dropped her side of the yearbook, causing Mulder to fumble and make a less-than-graceful grab at the book to save it from plummeting to the floor. She crossed back to her original place near the bed, carefully packing instruments into the black leather case. "Maybe we ought to interview Amber Volney, too, just to make sure." Her back was to him, her tone cool.

"You think they were dating behind the Sheriff's back?" Mulder asked, frowning faintly, less concerned with the dating rituals of teenagers than with the sudden return of Scully's bad mood.

"It's not impossible. Perhaps Amber broke off the relationship and Joshua wasn't ready to let go," Scully said, sounding slightly agitated. She continued to tidy, dropping the used latex gloves into a baggie to dispose of later. Mulder still couldn't see her face.

"So he stalked her, and she told her daddy a big lie so he'd threaten Joshua, is that what you're saying?" Mulder stared at the back of Scully's head and watched her swipe at that red curl as it fell into her eyes again. What had set her off this time? He'd flirted a little. So what? It hadn't even been a particularly good flirt. He hadn't had the spare brainpower to come up with a good double entendre for at least a half hour now. Was she pissed off because he'd flirted?

Mulder wished he wasn't so tired. Attempting to profile Scully on a good day was a workout, but after twenty hours on his feet and, if the truth be known, with a touch of indigestion from all that apple pie, profiling Scully was gaining him very little except a dull ache at the base of his skull.

"That's a little extreme, don't you think?" he added, just to see if she'd turn around.

She faced him, completely expressionless. Whatever anger she was feeling was tucked neatly behind that calm exterior; Mulder couldn't get a read on it at all. "I'm saying it's possible, Mulder, that's all."

Hell. He was too tired for this.

"Agent Scully? Agent Mulder?" Jean Denison was in the doorway. "Could you come out here for a minute?"

 

Andrew Schmidt and his wife Marty were both tall and dark-haired, traits they had obviously passed on to their children -- Joshua's younger sisters, Esther and Deborah, were both dark and gawky girls in their early teens. The girls were bustled out onto the front porch to "pray with your father," leaving Marty Schmidt in charge. It quickly became obvious to Scully that Marty was the head of the household, an iron-fisted ruler who might have been quite successful in a military career.

Jean Denison, it seemed, had met her match in Marty Schmidt, and was not at all happy about it. The moment that Jean reentered with Mulder and Scully in tow, Marty had turned and glared at Jean with piercing green eyes until Jean dropped her gaze, turning away from Marty and seeming to shrink in on herself; Jean looked daggers at Marty the moment Marty's attention was diverted, but didn't do anything else to challenge her authority. It was like something straight off The Learning Channel. No question about who was the alpha bitch *here*.

Sheriff Volney motioned for Scully to come forward; she did so, not without the vague feeling that she was Alice in Wonderland being introduced to the Queen of Hearts. Mulder started to follow; Volney frowned at him and shook his head, and Mulder stopped in his tracks.

Scully had to admit she was happy that Mulder wouldn't be in such close proximity for a few minutes, at least. She'd been thinking that maybe this Mulder-Awareness Day was over, after her shower this evening... she'd even relaxed enough to joke with Mulder a little. And then, at the first little flirtatious move on his part, she'd felt her body chemistry shift once again.

This was turning out to be a very long day.

"Marty," Volney said politely, "this is Agent Scully. She's the one we were telling you about."

Marty looked Scully over carefully, tilting her head to one side so that her dark hair waterfalled over her shoulder. Scully stood still and kept her expression neutral, quelling the illogical expectation that the tall woman was about to come over and sniff at her like a dog. At last Marty focused in on some spot directly below Scully's chin; Scully realized with a start that the point of interest was the gold cross around her neck.

"Yes," Marty announced suddenly, meeting Scully's eyes at last, "you are a believer. I can tell. You have the hand of the Lord upon you, Agent Scully."

Scully was at a loss. She had been mentally running through condolences, trying to pick one that was at once professional and compassionate; this, however, was a scenario for which she was completely unprepared. Nonetheless, she extended a hand to Marty. "Mrs. Schmidt."

Marty took Scully's hand, but instead of shaking it, she clasped it in both of her own and held it firmly, keeping Scully too close for comfort and with no avenue of escape. "Agent Scully, I can't tell you what a comfort this is to us. Jean has told me that you are close to the Lord, and I can see it on you."

Scully shot a look at Jean, who turned red. This was getting irritating. She hadn't spoken to Jean about issues of faith during any of their time together; she could only assume that Jean had plucked this story out of thin air, making a guess based on Scully's demeanor and her cross necklace.

"I'm glad to be of help, Mrs. Schmidt," Scully said, wishing the woman would let go of her; Marty had large sweaty hands and the whole handshake was starting to feel very humid.

"It means a *great deal* to us that Joshua will be in the hands of a woman of faith. We know you will handle him with respect and dignity."

Scully blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

Marty pressed Scully's hands even harder, boring into her with those vivid green eyes. "We would *never* let anyone touch our Joshua unless we knew they were acting as the hands of the Lord."

This was starting to make sense, but Scully didn't like it. "Mrs. Schmidt, I think there's been some kind of mistake--"

Volney made a sharp gesture behind Marty's back. Scully focused on him; he lowered his eyebrows and shook his head gravely. Oh God. It was all making sense now. This was the way out; this was the way to get the family to peacefully agree to let Joshua be autopsied. This was the straw that everyone was grasping at, looking to Scully to play along and not say anything.

She felt like screaming in frustration. The very idea of using her identity as a Christian to get a family to agree to an autopsy was fundamentally abhorrent to her, almost as repugnant as the idea of sleeping with someone to get a job, or a promotion. Under any other circumstances she would gladly do the autopsy, but she was irked by being accepted as a doctor because of her faith instead of because of her abilities. It was like being back at the naval base, being catered to because her father was respected rather than on her own merit. It had infuriated her then; it infuriated her now.

But the look on Volney's face, and on Jean's, and on the faces of the two deputies at the door, was a uniform expression of exhaustion and desperate hope. And Mulder, still hanging back in the hallway, looked like he was about to fall asleep on his feet. It was late. If she broke this last straw, it would only get later.

Marty Schmidt's hands trembled, and Scully's perception of the woman flipped sideways, from ice-cold woman to a deeply grieving mother whose control of the situation was the last link to her dead son. It was so easy to forget, sometimes, that these were people with lives of their own, lives that did not begin and end with their involvement in an FBI case, lives that had been irrevocably changed.

Scully could deal with death because she could act upon it, investigate it, explain it. These people could not.

Scully pressed her left hand on top of Marty's and gave her a gentle smile. "Mrs. Schmidt," she said, putting as much sincerity into her voice as she could, "rest assured, I'll do the best I can to give your son the care he deserves."


	5. Chapter 5

The Mo-Z Inn  
2:17 AM

The night was cool and windy, and the storm clouds were still rumbling occasionally, withholding their rain. The only sound besides the wind and the dull thunder was the crunch of the parking-lot gravel underfoot as Mulder and Scully walked to their motel rooms in silence.

Scully was exhausted. Her thoughts had taken on that peculiar merry-go-round quality, each one cycling back to the front in turn. Autopsy in four hours. Sleep. Better have the field office in Kansas City run an analysis on the blood. Sleep. Make sure the blood samples from the previous victims went out, too. Sleep. Might be a good idea to take apart the plumbing and look for traces of visceral material in the sink traps, especially the garbage disposal. Sleep. God, autopsy in less than four hours...

As they reached the sidewalk, a particularly strong gust of wind nearly caused her to lose her balance. She flailed for a brief moment; Mulder's hand shot out and grabbed her elbow, steadying her. "You okay?" he asked.

She shook his hand off. "I'm fine, Mulder."

Mulder held up his hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay."

"Good night, Mulder," Scully said, too worn out to rise to the bait. She pulled the room key out of her pocket and headed for her door.

"Scully, hold on a sec."

Inches from freedom, inches from bed. She put the key in the lock. "Mulder, please, it's late. It's beyond late, it's early. Can't we talk about it in the morning?"

"It'll only take a minute," Mulder promised, leaning against the wall next to Scully. "Humor me."

She looked longingly at the door. So close... "Fine," she said, and pushed her hair out of her eyes with a weary hand. "One minute."

"I want to interview Uncle Fred," Mulder said, and shoved his hands into his pockets like a man bracing himself for a deluge.

She stared at him. "You're joking."

He shrugged. She could hear the fabric of his trench coat rustle as his shoulders shifted.

"God," she sighed, resting her forehead against the door frame. "Look, Mulder, Fred Schmidt is delusional at best and possibly psychotic. I very much doubt that you could glean any information from him that isn't either deeply flawed or completely fictional."

"Maybe, maybe not," Mulder said. "Volney told us that Uncle Fred claimed that he was attacked by something shortly before Joshua's death. Whoever or whatever it was that killed that kid probably made a try for his uncle first and for some reason Fred was able to fend him off."

"Him?"

"Him, her, it, whatever. Fred may be an unreliable witness, but he's all we've got."

"Fine," Scully grumbled, and straightened up. "I have to be at the hospital at seven to start the autopsy. We can stop off at the psychiatric wing after I finish, and talk to Fred." She reached for her key, still jutting brightly out of the lock. "Goodnight."

"One more thing..."

Her open palm slapped against the door and she leaned into it, straight-armed, her head a little bowed. "*Yes*, Mulder?" She turned to see Mulder giving her his puppy-dog face, peaking his eyebrows and looking pitiful and hopeful at the same time. "What is it now?"

"Scully, do you remember when we were talking about switching off nights with the parrot?"

"No, Mulder," Scully gritted out. "I remember *you* talking about it."

"Just for tomorrow."

"No."

"Only the daytime hours, Scully. I'll take him back at night, I swear."

"Mulder, the parrot is your responsibility," Scully told him in her most authoritative voice. "I don't want it anywhere near me. Is that clear?"

"Yes," Mulder said, without changing his expression.

"Do you, dare I ask, have anything else to talk to me about?"

"Not really."

"All right." Scully was trying to look stern, but that stubborn curl that had been plaguing her all night slithered out from behind her ear and fell into her eyes. She couldn't summon the energy to brush it away and instead blew at it, once, ineffectively.

Mulder smiled, a rare gentle smile that made Scully's stomach turn over. "Problems?" he asked, his eyes straying to that curl.

"Nothing I can't handle," Scully said, but it came out much quieter than she meant it to. He was still looking at her with that smile on his face, and she couldn't think of anything else to say.

Mulder's every movement seemed to be twice as slow as usual, as if she was watching him move underwater. He reached over and smoothed that errant lock of hair out of her eyes, tucking it gently behind her ear. His fingers seemed to linger on her skin, burning a path across her forehead as he brushed back a few flyaway hairs. That sweet little smile widened slightly as he took his hand away. "Good night, Scully."

Scully realized she hadn't breathed since the last time she spoke. She sucked in a lungful of air, trying to look as though her normal respiratory process hadn't been interrupted by the slightest touch of her partner's hand. "Good night, Mulder." She fumbled at the key and the doorknob and almost fell across the threshold.

Holy Mary, Mother of God. She pushed the door shut behind her and managed to turn the dead bolt. Her hands were shaking. Actually shaking. Unbelievable. She must be in worse shape than she'd thought. A further personal inventory revealed that her knees were on the verge of buckling; she sagged against the door and closed her eyes.

Mulder's door closed, the impact of it making her own door rattle in sympathy. Her own trembling, however, was starting to fade away. She began to classify the phenomenon, her mind flinging pieces into different categories like a woman sorting laundry. She hadn't really eaten since lunch. She'd been up for almost twenty-four hours straight. Whatever effect Mulder was having on her, it was obviously augmented by low blood sugar and exhaustion. As a matter of fact, it was unlikely that much of this at all was due to Mulder's touch.

A breeze brushed her cheek with icy fingers. She looked up, frowning, and saw the curtains billowing away from the open windows like a pair of lungs made of synthetic fibers. Fresh air, very fresh, but far too cold. She ducked under the curtains and closed the windows. The scratchy curtains settled around her like a drift of feathers; she fought her way out and headed for the bathroom, hanging her trench coat neatly on one of the headless hangers in the open closet nearby. She did a cursory tooth-brush and face-wash, changed into her pajamas, dug her travel alarm clock out of her suitcase and set it, hit the light switch, and crawled gratefully between the cool sheets.

There was no further noise from Mulder's room, not even a squawk from the parrot.

 

She couldn't sleep.

At first she thought that it was the cool temperature of the sheets that was keeping her awake, but they soon warmed to her body temperature and she was forced to reconsider her theory.

Perhaps it was just the way she was lying on her back. She curled up on her right side, only to find that no matter where she put her elbow she just could not get comfortable, and her hair kept falling into her eyes. When she tried the left side, her leg fell asleep. She clenched and unclenched her toes; her leg began to fizz like a can of soda someone had shaken up as a joke, and she gritted her teeth until it subsided.

She twisted over onto her stomach, kicking at the covers-- the blankets   
were too heavy, that was the problem. Too tightly tucked in. Too   
oppressive. She took a moment to peel off the synthetic quilted coverlet   
and the fleecy blanket beneath it, leaving her with just the sheets. Now   
she was too cold. There was a tiny draft coming in from somewhere, tickling   
her knee. And the sheets were still too tight around her feet.

Scully kicked violently at the covers, thrashing around until she was wallowing in a pile of over-bleached cotton and slithery polyester. Better. But the pillow was way too flat. Maybe if she added the second pillow for more neck support...

The pulse in her neck was fluttering too quickly. She took a series of long, deep breaths, hoping to slow her heartbeat, but it didn't help. There was a dry, fuzzy band of tension inching across the back of her skull, the kind of headache she hadn't experienced since the night she'd drunk eight cups of coffee at a 24-hour diner, trying to pry a story out of a skittish witness. She was itching to check the clock, but hoped that if she just kept her eyes shut...

Just a little bit longer, that's all...

Scully wasn't sure how long it'd been since she'd turned over onto her back again. She was almost positive it had been more than five minutes, but then again, the early hours of the morning were always a case in point of Einstein's Theory of Relativity-- an hour could go by in an eyeblink or an eternity. The light filtering through the curtains gave her very little clue as to the time. She thought it was moonlight, since the shadows were cool and tinted with blue, but that may just have been wishful thinking.

The hell with it. Scully turned over and grabbed the alarm clock, clicking the little button that lit up the time so that she could see that it was almost four in the morning. Four. Two hours until morning. She glowered at the little clock and barely resisted the impulse to hurl it across the room.

Insomnia. God help her.

Scully rolled out of bed, pulled on her robe, and paced the room. It was insane how awake she felt; by all rights she should have been sleepy. By all rights she should have been *sleeping*. She was so tired that her bones ached, but she seemed to have completely lost the ability to fall asleep.

Work, perhaps, would dull her chattering brain and let her get a few precious hours of sleep. She turned on a small lamp, not quite ready to illuminate the whole room, and sat down at the small table in the corner. The case file was tucked neatly into her laptop case; her notebook, however, was missing. She found herself stalking around the room like a frantic mother with a carpool of children outside and the car keys nowhere to be found. It wasn't in the laptop case, it wasn't on the bedside table, it wasn't in her suitcase, it wasn't on the bed. Could it be in the car? Had she left it at the hospital in Leotie this evening?

She stood next to the table and dug at the base of her skull with one hand, trying to ease some of that dry ache while her mind spun in circles. At that moment, there was a parroty squawk from the next room, and Guido's Hit Parade came back on the air. "EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY, SOMETIMES..."

"Oh for God's sake," she groaned, and slammed the laptop shut. She switched off the light and stared into the dark while her eyes adjusted. Her hair fell into her eyes again and she automatically shoved at it, not really noticing the movement of her hand until her fingers brushed her forehead and she was jolted into memory.

Mulder's touch, Mulder's gentle smile.

A tiny sound slipped from her lips, like the whimper of a sleeping infant. She blinked, and shook her head violently to clear it. This was ridiculous. She was a responsible adult who ought to be beyond adolescent fantasies, and certainly shouldn't be letting this sort of thing keep her awake all night.

At any rate, a responsible adult ought to have some kind of medication in her suitcase that would make this subject moot.

Scully was not a great believer in sleeping pills. She was well aware that they served as a poor substitute for relaxation and the natural sleeping process; she had read all the documentation on the side effects and come to the logical conclusion that it was better to tough it out. Nonetheless, she found herself digging through every nook and cranny of her suitcase, hoping that she'd ignored her own conclusions and brought something along, anyway.

&lt;*A few drops of chloral hydrate will do the job every time.*&gt; She'd been joking when she said that, but now the joke was on her. There were no sleeping pills in her suitcase. The closest thing she could find was the box of motion sickness medication she'd used on the plane-- one of the side effects was drowsiness. She weighed her options, rolled her eyes, and put the box back in her suitcase.

She almost wished she *had* a few drops of chloral hydrate.

"EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY SOMETIMES..."

Correction: She wished she had a few drops of chloral hydrate for *Guido*. Damn that bird. Damn Marjorie Bailey for only teaching him the first line of that song. Damn Mulder for insisting they bring him back with them... and while she was at it, damn Mulder for being so sweet to her tonight. Damn her hormones for making so much of it. Damn this insomnia.

Damn, damn, damn.

She found herself hovering near the connecting door. Any moment now, Mulder would wake up, she was sure of it. He'd get up, and go over to the birdcage, and shut that bird up.

Her brain was spinning, conjuring up unsolicited fantasies of what her partner might be wearing. A T-shirt and sweatpants, probably; that was what he usually wore to bed. Maybe he'd left off the T-shirt. Maybe he was only wearing boxers. Or maybe...

She tried to push away the last thought, tried desperately to keep it from creeping through the crack in her mental brick wall, but it slipped out anyway.

Maybe, just maybe, Mulder was about to walk across that room with no clothes on whatsoever.

Dana Scully was no voyeur. She did not glance through windows when she walked past people's homes; she did not put her ear to the wall to listen to her neighbors' arguments; and she certainly didn't peek through the connecting door to her partner's room in the hopes of catching him wandering around in the buff. So why in the hell was she standing by this door, straining her ears, listening for any hint of movement?

She felt ridiculous. She felt like a cheap cliche.

She felt like yanking the door open and looking in because she wasn't hearing a damn thing that meant Mulder was awake and how on earth could Mulder *not* be awake with that parrot making so much noise?

"EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY..."

Her hand gripped the doorknob. She stopped, her adrenaline-driven heart pounding in her ears so loudly that it almost drowned out Guido's crooning. What was she *doing*?

Curiosity warred with common sense. A rationalization crept up in her mind, the cozy thought that she just really wanted to check on him, wanted to make sure he was all right. She could say that the parrot was keeping her awake and she wanted to make it shut up. It was close enough to the truth that she wouldn't choke on it as a lie.

"... SOMEBODY SOMETIMES..." The damn parrot sounded like a broken record. How could anyone sleep through that?

She knocked softly and listened, expecting to hear Mulder's footsteps approaching the door. Nothing. Guido's serenade continued unabated.

She waited, and knocked again, a little louder. Still no response. Scully took a deep breath and eased open the door to Mulder's room.

He was on the bed. Lying on his back. Sound asleep. Snoring very softly.

Fully clothed.

She honestly didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

The light was still on in his bathroom, seeping over Mulder's sleeping form,   
illuminating him with a dim yellow glow. He had removed his jacket and loosed his tie before falling asleep, and undone the top two buttons on his shirt, but that appeared to be all. The bedcovers were pulled back and he was sprawled out on the sheets. One arm was draped over his chest, the other dangling off the edge of the bed; he was still wearing his shoes, although one seemed to be untied.

She could not stop looking at him.

The opening of the door had brought an abrupt halt to Guido's staccato Dean Martin impression, and the silence in the room was almost eerie. Scully could hear Mulder's breathing, and her own heartbeat, and that was all.

She stood there for a long time, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest. Paralyzed. Her arms were wrapped around herself as if she was straitjacketed, holding herself back from causing damage. She breathed shallowly, her brow furrowed in something like pain as she stared at her sleeping partner.

He looked like a little boy. Sleep erased the tension from his face and touched his lips with the ghost of a smile, a faint echo of the way he'd smiled at her outside a few hours ago.

She meant to leave. She couldn't.

Mulder moved. Just a little. The hand dangling over the edge of the bed twitched, and her partner shifted on the bed, frowning, murmuring something unintelligible. Scully's heart rate shot up into the panic zone, despite her brain's efforts to shut down the flow of adrenaline. Her paralysis broke.

What was she doing here? What could she possibly be thinking?

Her eyes flicked over the room in confusion, her gaze caught by the fluttering curtains at the window. His window was open. She suddenly realized that it was cold in Mulder's room, cold enough to see your breath.

She took a step into his room, and then another. The rough carpeting rasped against her bare feet like steel wool. She developed a plan of surgical precision: go in, shut the window, go back to her room, shut the door. Swift, precise, no wasted movement. She programmed it into her bones, banished every thought of any other action.

The window was stuck.

She gaped at it in shock for what seemed like forever, unable to process the concept. When the realization finally registered, she yanked at the wooden frame as hard as she could, but there was no budging it. It might have responded well to a good *whack* with the heel of her hand, but this was not the time to find out, not with her partner sleeping peacefully ten feet away.

Shit. She glared at the window and chewed on her lip, trying to develop a new plan.

She could...

She could tuck him in.

She'd done it before, of course. Several times. She'd put him to bed after his father had been murdered and had sat beside him for most of the night, cooling his face with a wet cloth and soothing his nightmares with her voice. Such a long time ago.

She'd stripped him down to his boxers, that time; in comparison, tucking a few blankets around him tonight was nothing important. Certainly nothing to hesitate over. Nonetheless, she stood for long moments like a girl at her first dance, shifting her weight from foot to foot, hands twisting together hard enough to mark her skin with her nails.

One deep breath. Another.

Scully crossed resolutely to the foot of the bed. Her breathing sounded much too loud in the hushed room; she tried to be quieter, but her chest was already so tight with tension that the added action made her feel like she was suffocating. She moved slowly, lifting Mulder's feet one at a time, easing each shoe off with a care she usually reserved for adjusting the focus on a microscope. She set the shoes on the floor, side by side, and gently tucked Mulder's feet under the rumpled covers.

He was still asleep.

Scully crept around the edge of the bed, still walking on the balls of her feet like a cat, and reached over her sleeping partner to grab the sheet and blanket. It was a stretch, especially considering her determined effort not to lean on the mattress for fear of waking Mulder up; she found herself hovering over his chest for an endless moment, breathing him in.

He smelled of leather and warm cotton and sea-salt.

She finally managed a two-finger hold on the elusive bedding and inched her way back, trying not to let the covers brush against Mulder until they were finally in place; she let them settle over him, drifting into place with an almost imperceptible whoosh of air. There. Done. Mulder's hand was still dangling over the edge of the mattress; as an afterthought, she gently slid her fingers around his wrist and lifted his arm, moving it so that it rested on the bed, his hand palm-up, fingers curving in the soft relaxation of slumber.

Scully stood next to Mulder's bed for a long moment, watching him sleep.

She knew that she ought to leave.

She didn't.

She reached out without really thinking and touched his hair, the barest hint of a caress, much in the same way that he had touched her a few hours earlier. Her other arm was wrapped around her stomach again as though she were holding her insides together from a gunshot wound.

His skin was a shock against her fingertips, his warm solidity a shock to her mind. He was here, and she was touching him. This was not a dream.

The breath rushed out of her as reality hit home. She hitched in more air and swallowed hard. She was shaking all over; her nails bit into her ribs as her left hand tightened convulsively. She watched in awe as her fingertips ran lightly over his cheek, traced the line of his stubble-roughened jaw.

Touching him was like holding a lighted match. It threatened to burn her but she could not let it go, not yet. Not yet.

She brushed his lips with her thumb. Soft, slightly chapped, curving in a gentle smile. Her throat seemed to lock up as she traced the shape of his mouth, the memories of each time those lips had touched her cheek coming hard and fast and threatening to topple her over.

Slowly, her spine creaking at every centimeter, she bent over him. Closer. Closer.

She could not breathe at all.

Her lips were inches from his.

"EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY, SOMETIMES..."

Scully had never moved so fast in her entire life. One moment a breath away from kissing Mulder in his sleep; the next thing she knew, she was almost six feet away from the bed-- six feet in the wrong direction, six feet further away from the connecting door.

Shit!

She came to a sliding stop, the carpet burning her feet with the friction, her veins pumping almost pure adrenaline, trying to get enough control over her shaking limbs to make a similarly rocket-propelled journey back across the room to the door--

"... Scully?"

Mulder sat up, groggy, blinking and running a slow hand over his face.   
Scully froze, her heart was going like a trip hammer, trying to take a   
breath that would fill more than a quarter of her lungs. A shrieky little voice in the back of her head kept screaming *Caught! Caught! Caught!* It made it impossible to think.

"Sorry, Mulder," she said in something near her normal voice, "I didn't mean to wake you." That was for damn sure. "Go back to sleep."

"What are you doing in here?" Sleepy, but not stupid. Mulder was still rubbing one eye, but she could almost hear the neurons in his brain firing up and working through this new puzzle.

"I..." She couldn't remember. All she could remember was the way his eyelashes had curved across his cheeks, a tidbit of information which was absolutely no help under the circumstances. "I..."

Guido chose that moment for a repeat performance. "WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE LIKE A BIG-A PIZZA PIE THAT'S AMORE..."

The memory of her cover story hit like a thunderbolt. The parrot, right. She indicated the cage with a tilt of her head, raising her eyebrow and starting to feel a little more like herself. "I couldn't sleep." She crossed to the cage and made a great show of pulling the cover over the cage, effectively silencing Guido's serenade.

"Oh, sorry about that," Mulder mumbled, pulling back the covers and swinging his legs off the mattress. "I fell asleep the minute I got in here. I didn't even take off--" He broke off, looking down at his stocking-clad feet and at his shoes parked neatly beside the bed. "Huh."

Scully stiffened.

Mulder stared at his shoes, a strange look on his face. "I could have sworn--"

"I-- I--" she stuttered. The vague, unfocused fear of discovery had suddenly sprouted teeth and bitten her heart in half. "Mulder--" she croaked.

"Hmm?" He was still pondering his feet.

"-- I'll take the parrot tomorrow."

He looked up. "What?"

The words had fallen out of Scully's mouth so quickly that she had to backtrack to remember just what those words *were*. "I said... I'll take the parrot tomorrow." It didn't make any more sense the second time. "Just for the day. Like you said."

Mulder stared at her, a sleepy smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He stood up and ambled towards her, yawning, and extended one hand as though for a handshake. "I'm sorry, I don't believe we've met. Fox Mulder. And you are...?"

She swallowed the remnants of fear and waved his hand away, acting her normal part. "Mulder, it's obvious you're having trouble with Guido. If he keeps this up we're going to get thrown out of the motel. It's in both of our best interests if I help you out."

"Scully..." He was smiling. That puzzled, delighted smile that meant that she'd surprised him, that warm smile that spread across his face and lit up his eyes and made her feel irrationally pleased with herself. He was smiling, and she felt herself starting to smile back, and she hated herself for it.

She had a brief eyeblink vision of reaching for him, tugging his face down to her own. His arms tight around her. Their legs tangling together as they tumbled onto the bed...

She turned away. If she had looked at him any longer, she might have melted down like a candle and not have been recognizable when she cooled. "I'd better get to back to bed. I've got an autopsy in three hours."

He shrugged, and started towards the bathroom. "All right. Good night, Scully."

"Good night, Mulder." Scully walked through the door and closed it behind her. She could hear water running next door-- probably Mulder brushing his teeth, or washing his face. She sighed, and stared through the dark in the direction of his bathroom.

She focused, and found herself staring at her trench coat. A thought squirmed through her pounding brain, and she walked over and put her hand into the pocket.

Her fingers recognized the cool lines of the little notebook but she pulled it out to stare uselessly at it, in the dark. Next door, Mulder's bedsprings creaked.

She crossed the room in ten blind steps and looked at her alarm clock. It was four-fifteen. She didn't feel the least bit tired.

It was going to be a very long night.


	6. Chapter 6

"BEEEEEP BEEEEEP BEEEEEP BEEEEEP--"

Scully's hand shot out and clobbered the alarm clock, knocking it off the night stand. It clattered to the floor and kept right on shrilling, muffled slightly by its new face-down position on the carpet, but otherwise perfectly audible.

"beeeeep beeeeep beeeeep beeeeep--"

"Oh hell," Scully groaned, and opened her eyes. Six AM. The merest hint of sunlight filtered through the curtains, but most of the light in her motel room was dim and flickering and strangely colored. She lifted her head just enough to discover the source of the weird light-- and dropped back to the pillow with a groan. The TV. Apparently she'd fallen asleep while watching television, tangled up in the pile of sheets and synthetic coverlet, drooling down one cheek, her hair in her face. How glamorous.

The alarm clock continued its tinny one-note aria. In order to reach it, Scully would have to get out of bed, but she didn't want to get out of bed. She never intended to get out of bed again. She was fused to the lumpy mattress, pressed down by multiple G-forces like an astronaut during takeoff. The alarm clock would just have to keep beeping, because Dana Scully had become one with the bed.

She couldn't have had more than an hour of sleep. Barely enough for a respectable nap. Just enough to make her mouth feel sticky and to give her the shakes when she tried to move. Her mind felt like it was crawling through thick mud, just trying to put a coherent thought together... Get up. She had to get up. She had to get up and get dressed. There was an autopsy to do. Oh, God, the autopsy, and something else... she couldn't remember, something she had told Muld--

Oh.

GOD.

The *dream*.

The dream was coming back to her, now. An hour of sleep wasn't very much, but it was enough to dream, and good merciful heavens, what a dream. She closed her eyes and rubbed her face with a shaky hand, trying to piece it all together.

Mulder, of course. She remembered him smiling at her when he'd caught her in his room, remembered it very well-- that must have inspired this dream. A dream in which she hadn't looked away from him, hadn't stopped herself from smiling back at him, a dream in which he'd leaned in and touched her cheek and slowly, oh so slowly brushed his lips against hers... and she'd wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, and he had pulled her to him with those strong arms and his hands slid over her and he ground his hips against her and he kissed her and kissed her and oh God how he'd kissed her...

Ohhhhh. Ohhhh, sweet merciful heaven. She was aroused even now, lying half-dead in her bed and unable to move; she wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep and let that dream-Mulder finish the job of making love to her, but she had to get up. She had to.

Maybe she'd just lie here for another minute.

There was a very soft knock at the connecting door, like a hesitant woodpecker. Speak of the devil. "Scully? Are you awake?"

"Just a minute," she said, hating the thick feel of her voice. She fought her way out of the sheets and forced her lead-lined feet to walk over to the chair where she'd thrown her robe. She pulled the robe on, struggling with her own arms, and remembered the time back in medical school when she'd helped a classmate dress a corpse in a robe and slippers, as a joke on a third student; the wobbly feel of her own muscles reminded her of the awkward limbs of that corpse. Dana Scully, the Living Dead. She picked up the still-beeping alarm clock and shut it off, tossing it onto the bed as she crossed to the connecting door.

"Scully?" Mulder's voice was muffled, but the tone was unmistakably concerned.

"Hang on a minute, Mulder." A few strands of hair were pasted to her cheek by damp, sticky saliva; she pried them off before opening the door halfway. Mulder was leaning against the door frame, looking almost as weary as she felt.

He had changed out of his dress shirt and slacks since she'd last seen him; he was now wearing a gray T-shirt and dark sweatpants and looking deliciously mussed, his hair flattened on one side and standing on end on the other, his jawline dark with stubble. The warm sleep-smell coming from him was familiar, and somehow achingly erotic; that first-thing-in-the-morning fragrance that only a lover would know. A lover, or a partner who was seeing him far too early for comfort.

"Did I wake you?" Mulder asked, rubbing his neck. Another flash of that dream came back to Scully, a sensory half-memory of Mulder's strong hands carving a path down the length of her spine and pulling her closer to him. Ohhh ... She felt a warm tingle go through her and swallowed down the impulse to throw herself at him and bury her face in his chest.

"No, no, not really," Scully managed, congratulating herself on keeping such a steady tone of voice. She yawned involuntarily, covering her mouth. "My alarm went off a few minutes ago."

He nodded and looked at her for a moment, blinking sleepily. Scully wracked her brain, trying to think of what he could be doing, what on earth he could possibly want. He wasn't dressed yet, so he obviously wasn't ready to leave for Leotie. Oh God, had he figured out that she'd--?

She felt a wave of panic sweep over her and stomped down on it, hard. She hadn't done anything wrong. She'd had an odd moment there, sure, but she hadn't done anything, really, except tuck him in to keep him warm. Perfectly innocent. Any good friend would do the same.

"Mulder?" she asked at last. "What do you want?"

"Want?" He rubbed at one sleepy eye, almost smiling. "Not much. I just wanted to know if you wanted to have Guido move in with you now, or after the autopsy."

"I beg your pardon?" Scully was having trouble connecting the dots on this one.

Mulder's eyes narrowed, just a bit. "I didn't dream that, right? Didn't you say you'd keep him today?"

"Oh. OH." The memories were coming back now. She'd told him-- oh, hell. Late-night excuses be damned, what could she have been thinking? "That's right," she said slowly, "I said I'd take the parrot today."

Mulder grinned. "Oooh, this is fun. Do you remember agreeing to buy me lunch today, too?"

"Nice try, Mulder."

He shrugged. "Worth a shot."

Scully rolled her eyes and opened the door the rest of the way. "Okay. Go ahead and bring him in."

"All riiiight," Mulder cheered. He disappeared back into his room, returning after a moment with the cage. The cover was off; Guido peered balefully at Scully, spreading his wings for balance as Mulder held the cage up like a trophy. "Any particular place you want me to stick him?"

Scully's lips quirked upwards. "As a matter of fact, yes, but I'll settle for you putting the cage over in that corner."

"Ouch," Mulder said, wincing melodramatically. "You're wicked at this time of the morning, Agent Scully."

Scully lifted an eyebrow and headed for the bathroom. "Get the parrot set up and get out of here, Mulder, or I'll show you just how wicked I can be."

"Oooh, Scully," Mulder leered. "Promise?"

Scully sighed and shut the bathroom door behind her.

The bathroom was an appalling mess. She had dripped all over the floor last night, and, in the end, all her good intentions had amounted to was little more than sliding a few towels around with one foot while attempting to dry her hair. The rest of the towels had fallen onto the floor with the others during her fumbling late-night bedtime ritual, resulting in the damp mass of white terry cloth currently lurking on the cold tile near the toilet, exuding chilly moisture and the promise of mildew.

A single unused washcloth hung on the towel rack, looking lonely. Her hairbrush and comb had both fallen in the sink and were huddled together below the faucet like refugees, a few red strands curling away from the brush to stick to the surface of the porcelain basin. And to top it all off, the toothpaste tube was missing its cap.

Scully was a woman to whom tidiness was not only habitual, but almost instinctual. A mess like this could only mean that sometime in the last twelve hours she'd lost her mind completely, which might not be that far off the mark.

She sighed, and toed the pile of wet towels, conducting an eyeball search of the room for the toothpaste cap and coming up empty. Perfect. Just perfect.

There was a loud squawk from the bedroom. Scully rolled her eyes and opened the door just in time to hear Guido's latest proclamation.

"JACK AND JILL WENT UP THE HILL, THEY EACH HAD A BUCK AND A QUARTER. JILL CAME DOWN WITH TWO AND A HALF, DO YOU THINK THEY WENT UP FOR WATER?"

"Mulder!" Scully scolded.

Near the window, Mulder looked over his shoulder with a guilty smile. "What can I say, Scully, I got sick of the Rat Pack impressions."

"So you taught the parrot a dirty joke?"

"No, no." Mulder looked self-righteous. "A slightly off-color poem."

"Oh, excuse me, Mister Culture." Scully watched him, tightening the sash of her robe just a bit. "You do realize that we have to return Guido to his rightful owner the day after tomorrow, don't you?"

"Relax," Mulder said, moving a finger back and forth in front of the cage like a doctor checking for head trauma. Guido followed the finger with his whole head, fascinated. "Nobody can prove it was me. For all we know, Marjorie Bailey had a large repertoire of questionable poetry in addition to her extensive collection of Elvis memorabilia." Mulder elaborated on his parrot hypnosis by wiggling his finger puppet-style.

The parrot's head snaked forward and he snapped at the bars. Mulder yanked his hand back in a big hurry and slammed his elbow into the wall, dislodging the empty bookshelf above him; he ducked and managed to avoid getting his head bashed in as the heavy shelf thudded to the floor.

Scully snorted, amused.

"Bad Guido," Mulder informed the bird, wagging his finger at him from a safe distance. "Hey, Scully, did you know that parrots typically start biting when they're ready to find a mate?" He looped a crooked grin at her as he put the shelf back up. "Much like humans in that regard."

"Whatever you say, Mulder," Scully sighed, and crossed to the bedside table to pick up the telephone receiver and dial. "Housekeeping? This is Agent Scully in room one-twenty-one. I need a new set of towels. Yes. Thank you."

"New towels, Scully?" Mulder, finished with his work on the shelf, plopped into the sagging armchair and grinned devilishly at her. "Did you have a hot-tub party and forget to invite me?"

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "Sorry, Mulder, I figured you needed your sleep."

"Your concept of my priorities is sadly out of whack."

"Speaking of priorities, I have an autopsy in less than an hour." Scully made little shooing gestures at her partner. "Go. Get back in your own room."

Mulder clambered out of the chair and made a face. "You're no fun anymore."

"Keep that up, Mulder, and I'll teach the parrot to say something insulting about you." She steered him to the connecting door in her best no-nonsense manner.

Mulder seemed intrigued at the thought. "Like what?"

"You'll know it when you hear it," she promised, and shut the door behind him.

"JACK AND JILL WENT UP THE HILL," Guido announced, "THEY EACH HAD--"

"Oh, shut up!" Scully snarled. Surprisingly, Guido fell silent. He fluffed his feathers arrogantly and regarded his new roommate with his head cocked to one side. Scully stared back.

This was the first time she had taken a good look at the parrot. Despite being a pain in the ass, Guido really was a gorgeous bird; his feathers were a beautiful mix of shades of light and dark gray, except for the deep scarlet of his tail. Gorgeous, loud, and irritating... She briefly pondered the image of Mulder sitting on a perch in a large cage, engaged in a long monologue about extraterrestrial life, and shook her head to dispel the thought.

There was a knock at the door. "Housekeeping!"

"That was quick." Scully opened the door and recoiled involuntarily at the familiar face. "Oh, God."

Mae the Maid stood outside, once again holding a neat stack of towels. Luckily, she didn't seem offended by Scully's reaction; Mae just grinned and shook her head, causing the thick cinnamon braid over her shoulder to flap. "Don't worry, I didn't work all night, just covering a shift for someone else." She lifted the towels, extending them toward Scully. "Need some towels?"

"Yes, please." Scully accepted the towels and warily stepped back to let Mae inside. "I'll get the old ones for you. They're a little wet."

Mae entered the room and came to an abrupt halt, staring at the birdcage. "Is that the parrot?"

Scully was already halfway to the bathroom. "That's him."

"God, he's a big one."

"Don't get too close," Scully warned, pausing with one hand on the door frame before disappearing into the bathroom. "Sometimes he bites."

Mae approached the cage warily, stopping a few feet away and hovering as though repelled by a magnetic field. "Hey there, birdie," she cooed. "Hey there."

Guido regarded Mae carefully, first with one eye and then with the other. Apparently dissatisfied, he cranked himself around on the perch and presented her with his tailfeathers.

The connecting door to the next room swung suddenly open and Mulder entered, shirtless, holding a box of bird food. "Hey, Scully, I--" He noticed Mae. "Oh, excuse me."

Mae stared at him. Her mouth moved, but no sound emerged.

Mulder scanned the room fruitlessly. "Scully?"

"Hang on a minute, Mulder," Scully called. "I'll be right out."

"No, don't bother, I'm just leaving the food for Guido." Mulder started to set the box of birdseed on the bookshelf near the cage, then made a face as though remembering something and set it on the floor, instead. He nodded at Mae and left, shutting the door behind him.

Mae stared at the door. At last she managed a low whistle. "Oh, baby," she murmured, shaking her head. "Fuck me 'til I *faint*."

"Did you say something?" Scully asked, emerging from the bathroom with her arms full of damp towels.

"Me? No." Mae vaguely accepted the bundle of terry cloth, her eyes distant.

Scully took in the dazed expression on the woman's face. "Are you all right?"

"Ohhhh, yeah," Mae said, her voice starting high on the scale and sliding down. Her eyes focused on Scully and she grinned. "Yeah, I'm just dandy. Do you need anything else?"

"No," Scully said cautiously, "that'll be all."

Mae exited without another word, but she gave Scully another eyebrow-waggling smirk before the door closed between them. Weird. That woman was starting to worry Scully. The last thing she needed on this trip was some kind of mental case prowling around the motel. She had enough to deal with as it was.

 

She hadn't gotten around to scrubbing during her previous shower. This time she was determined to make up for it, even if she had to take off a layer or two of epidermis. Besides being cleansing, it was bound to wake her up a bit.

So, she'd had a dream. Big deal. Admittedly, it had been one hell of a vivid dream, but that didn't mean it had to affect her whole day. She just had to get a hold of herself, and get past it. It had only been a dream. She dealt with the detritus of crime and human cruelty every day of her life; surely she could deal with the aftereffects of one erotic dream.

Two Mulder-Awareness Days in a row was a concept that defied sanity.

She sighed and rubbed her face with one hand, feeling the lukewarm water trickle over her cheeks. Logically, she reasoned that there must be something at the bottom of days like this one. In every male-female relationship there was always some kind of sexual tension. It was only natural. Evolution, concerned with the propagation of the species, had not provided for cross-gender friendships, and so hormonal promptings like this should not be unexpected.

Hormones. Scully closed her eyes and considered it. An excess of hormones could be just as debilitating to the judgment as strong drink, or drugs. There wasn't anything she could do to avoid it; she could only hang on, ride out the hurricane, and police her thoughts more carefully, just in case her crippled judgment decided to act upon any of those thoughts.

Simply put, don't touch him. And for God's sake keep him from touching her at *all*.

 

Scully emerged from the bathroom in record time; clean, hair tamed, and makeup in place. Guido seemed pleased to see her; he shifted from foot to foot and nodded his head in a little parrot-dance. "HELLO!"

"Hello, yourself," Scully said, feeling almost benevolent towards the bird.

Guido whistled at her and burst into song. "DANKE SHÖEN... DARLIN'... DANKE SHÖEN ..."

Scully pulled her clothes on as fast as she could. Illogical though it was, she felt a little uncomfortable about dressing in front of the parrot. On the one hand, she was aware that Guido was just a bird-- on the other hand, he was a *talking* bird, and that put a weird spin on the situation. She felt much better when she was fully clothed.

She took a last look in the mirror and noticed Guido watching her from behind. "How do you like the suit, Guido?"

"JACK AND JILL WENT UP THE HILL," Guido announced, bobbing his head up and down. "THEY EACH HAD A BUCK AND A QUARTER."

"Oh, please," Scully groaned.

"OH PLEASE," Guido echoed cheekily, and let his beak gape open.

Scully stared at the bird, shaking her head. It was amazing. She could have sworn that Guido was grinning, and a familiar grin at that-- a very Smart-Ass-Mulder grin. She rolled her eyes and turned away. She must be losing her mind.

There was a sharp knock at the front door. "Room service." It was Mulder's voice, pitched to a warbling falsetto but still perfectly recognizable. Scully opened the door, yawning, and came face to face with a steaming Styrofoam cup with a stylized coffee mug on the front. "Looks like I got here just in time," Mulder said. "Yawning like that has been known to cause dislocated jaws."

Scully smiled faintly and accepted the coffee, shivering at the chill in the air. "Is that an X-File?"

"No, actually, it's just something I heard when I was a kid," Mulder grinned, and took a sip from his own cup of coffee. His hair was still damp from the shower; Scully could smell the shampoo. He held up a waxy paper bag and shook it slightly. "Two jelly doughnuts, one chocolate glazed, and one plain. Are you ready to go?"

"Almost." Scully meant to duck back inside, but she saw Mulder shake his head slightly. "What?" she asked.

"We're a little ahead of schedule," he said. "Check out the scenery, Scully. Stand still for a minute and breathe."

The impending clouds from the previous night were still impending, so the dawn was a gray one, but the air was fresh and tangy with early spring. The Mo-Z Inn was located on the edge of town, on what passed for a hill in this part of the country, and the view seemed to literally go on forever. There were bare brown fields, dotted with stubble, and miles upon miles of grayish grass, but here and there Scully saw what looked like fields carpeted in a vibrant green-- winter wheat, an incongruous sign of life and growth. Scully could hear the murmur of human voices and the faint metallic sound of silverware from the diner next door, and a scattering of birdsong from the nearby trees.

It was still cold, but it was very peaceful. On a summer morning, Scully imagined, this might be like a little slice of heaven.

"How long do we get to do this?" she asked, smiling into her coffee. Cream, no sugar. Perfect.

"We still have thirty seconds. How's the coffee?"

"Good. Strong." She took another sip. "Hot."

Mulder smiled down at her. "Does that mean you won't teach Guido to say mean things about me?"

She'd completely forgotten about her threat. "Oh. Mulder, I--"

"OH BABY!" Guido piped up in the background. "FUCK ME 'TIL I FAINT!"

Scully's jaw dropped.

Mulder blinked.

"FUCK ME 'TIL I *FAINT*! OH PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE--"

All the blood drained from Scully's face. Mulder looked at her in surprise.

She held up one hand like a traffic cop. "Don't say it."

"Who, me?" Mulder looked innocent. "I'm not the one who--"

"I said *don't*." Scully glared at him, turned, and darted back into her room, grabbing her ID, keys, and weapon.

"OH PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE--"

The temptation to whip the semiautomatic out of its holster and shoot the damn parrot was almost overwhelming. Scully had to force herself to clip the gun at her waist and walk back outside. She slammed the door behind her, effectively cutting off the sound.

The agents walked to the car in complete silence, neither one looking at the other.

"Jeez, Scully," Mulder said at last, sounding mildly scandalized, "all *I* taught him was a lousy poem."

"Shut up, Mulder."

There was another long stretch of silence as they got into the car. Mulder sat in the driver's seat, silently handed Scully the bag of doughnuts, and started the motor.

Finally, he broke the silence. "Hey, Scully?"

"What is it, Mulder?"

"Dibs on the chocolate doughnut."

"In your dreams."


	7. Chapter 7

Bryan Memorial Hospital  
8:27 AM

The coffee finally kicked in about halfway through the autopsy. Scully could feel the caffeine making its deliberate way through her veins, easing the ache in her hands and making her sluggish thoughts suddenly slam into hyperdrive. All the anger and frustration that had been buried underneath the exhaustion came crawling to the surface, and Scully found herself standing at the head of the old-style porcelain table, clutching a Strycker saw and entertaining thoughts of using it to chew through Jean Denison's skinny neck.

The nerve of that woman, to put her on the spot like that. The *nerve*.

This was possibly the most frustrating autopsy in history, rivaled only by yesterday's frustrating autopsy of Marjorie Bailey. The only thing revealed in the external examination-- besides an impressive collection of acne scars and a birthmark shaped like a telephone receiver-- was the large red patch on the torso, and which revealed nothing upon closer examination that she hadn't already noticed. There was no block of organs to examine, and the brain, now soaking in a jar of formaldehyde, wouldn't be solid enough to manipulate for a good two weeks; all that was left to do was poke around in the body cavity, taking samples of the scalded-looking muscle tissue and the occasional puddle of foul-smelling mucus.

And nothing, *nothing* on the outside. Scully had checked, and checked again, searching for any marks that would indicate restraints, or a bruise from a struggle, or even fibers or hairs from a stranger's mere presence. Not a thing, except for the flaky red patch. She had examined some of the skin samples from the patch, and found exactly what she'd expected: it was a burn mark, a scorch mark, as though someone had taken hot water and let it dribble over the boy's upper body. No sign of what had made it.

Stranger still, there was an identical swath of scalded tissue on the inside muscle wall, exactly parallel to the mark on the outside of the body. Closer examination showed signs that the heat, whatever its source, had penetrated right through; the question was-- was it something burning its way in, or something inside the boy burning its way out?

She was too tired to remember why she had agreed to do this. All she could focus on was that it was one-hundred-percent Jean Denison's fault. Jean, who had shamelessly volunteered Scully for this crap. Jean, who could have been doing this instead. Jean, who was probably still sleeping right now. Jean, who spent all her time staring at Mulder's ass instead of getting any damn work done, not that Mulder would ever have anything to do with her--

Scully realized she was brandishing the Strycker saw like a weapon, and carefully set it back down on the aluminum tray. God, what was the matter with her? Back to work. Finish this up, then go get some more coffee and wait for Mulder to get back from the psych ward. Coffee, yes, definitely; even that awful bitter hospital-cafeteria coffee sounded good. How pathetic. At this rate, she'd be chewing coffee beans by the end of the   
day.

She had just pulled the scalp back down over the calvarium when her caffeine-heightened senses picked up on a presence, someone hovering just behind the doors of the autopsy bay. She looked up to find Mulder peeking through the window. He met her gaze and smiled.

Scully stripped off the latex gloves and tossed them in the medical disposables bin, which Mulder seemed to take as his cue to push the door open slightly and stick his head inside the room. "Hey there."

"Hey." She pulled the surgical mask and protective eyewear off her face and ran a hand through her hair, trying to get rid of the lingering sensation of pressure from the mask ties. "I didn't expect you back so quickly."

"Almost finished?" Mulder asked, his eyes flickering from her face to the corpse and back again.

"Almost. I can leave the rest of it to the morgue assistant." She raised an eyebrow. "Didn't Uncle Fred have anything interesting to say?"

"Haven't talked to him yet," Mulder said matter-of-factly, pushing the door the rest of the way open and walking on in.

Something was up. Scully's eyebrow crept further toward her hairline.   
"By any chance are you having trouble finding the psych ward?"

"Haven't looked for it yet," Mulder said in that same tone of voice, frowning as he looked down into the still-open chest cavity of the corpse. He caught Scully's look as he glanced back up, and shot her a swift grin.

She ignored it. He wasn't buying her off with that grin, not today. "Then what have you been doing for the past hour and a half, Mulder?"

"Waiting on you, mostly."

"Why?"

He grinned that adorable Aw Shucks, Ma'am grin, shrugging one shoulder. "I just thought the interview might go better with you there."

"I'm touched," Scully said dryly, waiting for the other shoe to drop. "What brought this on?"

Mulder shrugged again, chewing just a little on his lower lip. "I might need backup in case Fred starts hurling Bible verses at me."

Scully shook her head. "I'm pretty rusty on my Scripture, Mulder. I don't think I'd be much help."

"Why, Scully, I'm shocked," Mulder gasped mockingly. "A good Catholic girl like you, unprepared to lock horns with a small-town chapter-and-verse nut like Fred."

Her frayed temper snapped. No more of that shit-- first Jean Denison, then Marty Schmidt; there was no way in hell that she was going to let Mulder jump on this particular bandwagon. "Dammit, Mulder, will you give the religious stuff a rest?" she snarled. "Just because I happen go to church doesn't give you the right to pawn off every fundamentalist freak on me, so drop it."

Mulder blinked at Scully. It occurred to her, belatedly, that she had blown up at the wrong person. It wasn't his fault that Jean Denison had pulled this crap; it wasn't his fault that the victim's family was intensely religious; it wasn't his fault that she hadn't found anything in this autopsy. It *was* his fault that she hadn't slept last night, but then again, it wasn't something he'd done on purpose.

God help her. She closed her eyes for half a second; when she opened them again, Mulder was walking toward the door.

Oh, no. "Mulder--"

"I'll just go do the interview," Mulder said, not looking at her. "I don't think it'll take more than five minutes, ten tops. I'll meet you in the lobby."

He was out the door before she could apologize.

 

"Mulder!"

Mulder turned to find Scully bearing down on him like a redheaded bullet train. She'd come after him. Of course she had; Scully never liked being let off the hook, even when Mulder was the one who'd put her on the hook in the first place. "Scully," he said sharply, continuing his walk down the hall, "I told you, I'll handle it on my own."

Scully caught up with him, automatically adjusting her pace to keep up with his longer stride. "Mulder, I'm going with you."

"Forget it, Scully," Mulder said with an overly casual shrug. "You're busy. I'll meet you back here in ten minutes."

"Mulder--"

"Ten minutes, Scully."

Scully grabbed Mulder's sleeve, bringing him to an abrupt halt and pulling him around to face her, so close that she was practically treading on his toes. "Dammit, Mulder, will you let me apologize already?"

Mulder stared down at her, surprised. Some unidentifiable emotion flitted across her face before she regained her usual neutral expression; she pulled her hand away and moved back half a step. What had just happened? He searched her eyes, looking for the source of that sudden withdrawal, but the barriers were back up and he couldn't get a read on her. "Okay," he said slowly. "Go ahead."

Scully just looked at him. "Stay here," she said at last. "Give me a minute to get cleaned up, and I'll go with you. All right?"

"All right," Mulder agreed. He chanced a small smile. "Is that the apology?"

Scully's mouth twisted in something halfway between a smile and a grimace. "At this point, Mulder, I suggest you take what you can get."

 

There was only one nurse manning the station at the psych ward, and she seemed far too young to be in charge. She was twenty-five, perhaps younger; an attractive, baby-faced woman, her dark hair and huge dark eyes contrasting with the brilliant white of her uniform. She glanced up as the agents approached, swiveling her chair away from the computer with a professionalism that bordered on religious fervor. Scully was struck by a memory of herself around that age, throwing herself heart and soul into medical school, burning up with dedication.

Mulder, it seemed, was not considering professionalism; out of the corner of her eye, Scully noticed his gaze slip past the nurse's face, lingering lower-- on her breasts?-- before he looked back up with his most charming, conspiratorial grin. "Hello," he said, the flirtatious tone of his voice echoing the implications of his grin.

Scully gritted her teeth.

The nurse-- her name tag gave her name as Lois Rubin-- did not respond to either the grin or to the voice. She merely smiled politely, exposing small white teeth that reminded Scully of Tic-Tacs. "May I help you?"

Mulder leaned forward, resting his elbows on the high counter surrounding the nurse's station; Scully could practically smell the testosterone levels sliding up the scale. "I certainly hope so. We're here to speak with Fred Schmidt."

Lois glanced at a clipboard on her desk. "I don't have any information on this. Are you related?"

"To--?"

"To Mr. Schmidt."

"No," Mulder said, sounding amused.

Scully flipped her ID open and held it up, tired of this game. "We're with the FBI. I'm Agent Scully and this is Agent Mulder. We'd like to ask Mr. Schmidt some questions."

Lois blinked, her eyes getting even wider. She went stock-still like a startled woodland creature, wary and poised for flight. "May I ask what this is regarding?"

Scully put on her stern expression. "It's regarding the death of his nephew."

Wheels spun almost visibly in the young nurse's head as she attempted to process this unfamiliar request. Finally she stood, making an almost unconscious gesture toward the phone. "I'll have to call my superior."

"That's fine," Scully assured her; Lois picked up the phone and dialed, turning away to ensure her privacy. Scully glanced at her partner, only to find Mulder's attention still glued to the shapely nurse. He seemed to be staring directly at Lois's round bottom.

Scully felt like punching him in the nose.

Lois murmured something into the phone, pitching her voice too low for Scully to make out what she was saying. A pause; more murmuring. Lois turned her head to glance at the agents; Scully caught the words "don't know if we should, really" as Lois turned back around, then more unintelligible murmurs.

Scully looked over at Mulder, expecting to find him still staring at Lois's ass; she was relieved to realize that he was engrossed in one of his less offensive hobbies: eavesdropping. Under normal circumstances, Scully might have elbowed him or cleared her throat to indicate her disapproval, but at the moment, almost anything was preferable to... to...

Well, eavesdropping wasn't really so bad.

Lois turned back around, setting the receiver back in its cradle with a very professional *click*. "Mr. Schmidt is in room three-oh-three. You can stay for ten minutes; any more than that and he gets agitated." She leaned slightly over the counter and politely pointed at the hallway to their left. "It's down that hallway, past the elevator."

 

"Have you been washed in the blood of the Lamb?" Fred Schmidt was sitting cross-legged on the hospital bed, the sheet pulled to his waist, the hospital gown hanging on his skinny frame in baggy folds. He was considerably calmer than he had been last night, possibly due to some kind of medication. His enthusiastic Bible-waving had been replaced by wide-eyed staring-- but after two long minutes of the staring, Scully was beginning to miss the Bible-waving.

This was insane.

She couldn't believe she'd actually argued with Mulder for the privilege of coming along on this interview. Damn him and that pitiful look of his. So she'd jumped down his throat for no reason. So what? She shouldn't feel as though she had to make it up to him, she shouldn't have some automatic need to make the puzzled hurt leave his eyes.

She'd made the offer and now she had to deal with the consequences. Namely, Fred. Fred, who had been staring at her face with his dry, spiraling, mesmerizing stare for two very long minutes now-- and completely ignoring Mulder. Fred, who had been keeping up an intense, low-pitched monologue for most of those two minutes, ignoring any queries that the agents had put to him and not listening to any of their answers to *his* questions. Fred, who did not seem to have anything useful at all to contribute to this investigation and was still *staring* at her.

Mulder was a dead man.

"*Have* you?" Fred pressed. He never seemed to blink. Perhaps his colorless eyes were equipped with a clear nictating membrane that prevented them from drying out ... or maybe they were already dried out, and Fred simply didn't care. "Have you been WASHED, have you been SAVED, have you found SALVATION?"

Enough of this. Scully crossed her arms over her chest and returned Fred's stare. "Mr. Schmidt," she said calmly, "there are a few questions that we need to--"

"You need the love of CHRIST," Fred informed her; his eyes grew even wider, and a thin trickle of saliva began to make its way down his chin. "A woman is a base creature of LUSTS and PERVERSIONS, she must be sanctified by the blood of the LAMB before she goes out into the world to TEMPT men into sin, just as Eve tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden..."

It occurred to Scully just how much Fred's attitude towards women would benefit from a swift kick in the testicles.

Mulder cleared his throat and leaned into Scully's line of vision, bringing an end to the staring contest. "Mr. Schmidt," he said, "we have to ask you some questions about your nephew's death."

"All God's creatures return to the dust at their proper time," Fred intoned, tilting his head so that one colorless tuft of hair pointed skyward. "Joshua's soul is in the hands of his Heavenly Father." He still hadn't blinked. Scully couldn't remember how long the interval between blinks was supposed to be in humans, but she was positive that Fred had exceeded it at least a minute ago.

"Be that as it may," Mulder said calmly, "what we're concerned about is the *manner* in which Joshua's soul departed his body last night." He was using his soothing voice, with just a hint of-- what was it, amusement? Yes, that was it, Mulder was amused. The bastard. "You told the sheriff that you yourself were attacked shortly before Joshua's death. Can you tell us about the attack?"

"I was sleeping-- I was dreaming-- I felt-- someone-- PRESSING me," Fred announced, staring at Mulder now, spitting a little on each plosive sound. "Pressed so that I could not MOVE, could not BREATHE-- someone on TOP of me-- on my CHEST--"

Well, now, this was getting somewhere. Scully risked a glance at Mulder, searching for his opinion in his face. Whatever he was feeling, he was hiding it well; her only clue was the slight press of his lips. Could be tension, could be annoyance, could be some kind of repressed smile.

It sure as hell was sexy.

"Running hot HANDS over me-- PRESSING into my body like a WHORE--"

Mulder turned his head slightly, and Scully realized with a jolt that she'd been staring at his mouth. Oh, no, for God's sake, not now... He caught her eye, lifted an eyebrow slightly and tilted his head just a little in Fred's direction, the ghost of a smile lurking in his eyes.

"HOLDING me down, helpless-- helpless as a BABY-- lighting a FIRE in my belly --"

She looked away.

"A FIRE that burned in my loins like the--"

"Mr. Schmidt," Mulder interrupted, "can you tell us who it was that attacked you?"

Fred focused on Mulder, leaned forward, and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. "The spirit."

"I beg your pardon?" Scully exclaimed, immediately regretting it as Fred swiveled around and focused on her.

"The unclean SPIRIT," Fred hissed intently. "The unclean spirit came upon me in my SLEEP-- it tempted me with LEWD DREAMS--"

"So," Mulder interrupted again, "you were asleep, the... unclean spirit... pressed you to your bed and made you dream... and then what happened? You woke up?"

"Yes."

"What exactly was it that woke you?" Mulder asked. "Was there a noise in the room?"

"No no no..." Fred shook his head slowly, and let out a long hissing breath. "It was the dream."

"You woke up because of the dream."

"Yes." Fred nodded once, sagely. "The Lord commands us to FIGHT temptation, just as He fought Satan in the desert."

Mulder had his Super G-Man face on; his body language was deliberate and showy, designed to prove that he was firmly in charge of this interview. "So you fought the dream, and woke up."

"Yes," Fred agreed. His lips parted slightly and the tip of his pale pink tongue thoughtfully touched first his upper lip, then his lower lip, and disappeared back into his mouth. "I awoke, and the demon was on me-- a perverse creature of SATAN-- a demon built like a woman, created to TEMPT men with her body, ENSNARE them and TRAP them in sin--"

"Mr. Schmidt," Mulder began, but whatever control he'd had of this interview had been short-lived. Fred had started to sway back and forth, his eyes rolling back in his head and his voice edging back up into that peculiar evangelical resonance as he continued his monologue.

"-- eyes like glittering EMERALDS and hair the color of NIGHT, FLOWING like a flock of goats moving down the slopes of GILEAD-- lips like a scarlet THREAD-- breasts like two FAWNS--"

Scully hadn't been kidding when she'd told Mulder that she was a little rusty on her Bible verses, but Fred's babbling was eerily familiar. The Song of Solomon, practically verbatim. She frowned. Green eyes, black hair-- why did that sound familiar? Someone she'd met recently?

"-- running her HANDS over me-- her HANDS-- on my CHEST--"

The description clicked home as Scully remembered Marty Schmidt, the dark-haired, startlingly green-eyed alpha female of the tiny zealous family. The Commandments said not to covet thy brother's wife, but apparently Fred had ignored the fine print and gone for his nephew's wife, instead.

An affair? No, even Marty Schmidt had to have better taste in men than that. Unrequited, then, but still noteworthy. Something strange was definitely going on in this town.

"MR. SCHMIDT!" Mulder snapped. Scully whipped her head around, surprised, half-expecting to see her partner grab Fred Schmidt by the front of the shirt and shake him-- but Mulder seemed calm enough. His eyes had that sharp look, the watchful gleam of a hunter who has just spotted a flicker in the underbrush and is waiting to see if it was just the wind or the brush of a tiger's tail. Focused. Intense.

Sensual.

Oh, sweet Mary, mother of God...

Fred ignored Mulder as though he had never spoken. "-- PRESSING against my body--"

Mulder turned his eyes to Scully. There was frustration in his look, amusement and annoyance and anger all churning together, making his eyes seem darker.

His thought processes were easy enough to follow. That flicker of attention from her, to Fred, and back again, the barest movement of an eyebrow-- that was an old signal, the one they always used to trade off during interviews, the one that meant, 'I'm not getting anywhere with this, it's your turn.'

Scully frowned marginally and shook her head just a fraction. No. She'd had enough of Fred for one day; she was still angry with Mulder for pulling her in here in the first place, and besides, she couldn't think of anywhere to take this interview.

"-- putting her scarlet MOUTH to mine to sip my LIFE out through my lips--"

Mulder gave her the signal again, elaborating it with a double-eyebrow lift and a tilt of the head. Scully glared at him and deliberately turned away.

Forget it. She'd already done Mulder enough favors for one day--

And then she felt Mulder's hand brush against her wrist. A very light touch. Warm fingertips. An almost palpable electrical charge vibrating between them.

Oh God.

Scully stepped away from Mulder, ostensibly to get closer to the bed but really in a desperate quest for escape. "Mr. Schmidt!" she bit out. Amazingly, Fred stopped his swaying and chanting, and focused his pale eyes on Scully. She took a deep breath. "Mr. Schmidt, can you please tell us how you fought off this... demon?"

Fred blinked, actually blinked. "I PUSHED the harlot from me-- she HISSED, and MOCKED me, and sprang toward me AGAIN--" He drew a deep, shuddering breath. "I prayed, prayed to JESUS, to save me from the demon, and--"

He stopped, his mouth hanging open, as if his batteries had run down.

"... And?" Scully prompted.

Fred focused on Scully. The crazy whirling in his eyes came to a sudden halt, and for a moment his expression was completely normal and sane. "And it was gone. It just disappeared."

Scully felt an opinion forming in the back of her mind, but this was not the time or place to share it. Instead, she looked up and over her shoulder at Mulder, raising her eyebrows in a silent question -- Can We Go Now?

Mulder, deep in thought, shook his head. "Just a few more questions, Mr. Schmidt. Last night you said something about needing to 'cleanse' your nephew. What exactly did you mean by that?"

Fred still seemed sane; he blinked owlishly at Mulder and spoke in a normal voice. "Joshua needs to be cleansed of the touch of the demon, lest his immortal soul be compromised."

"The same demon that attacked you?" Mulder asked.

"Of course." Fred's attention drifted back to Scully and he smiled, narrowing those eerie eyes and showing most of his teeth. As she watched, the pale light in his gaze began to spin again, like a crazed merry-go-round. "The demon," he whispered, holding her eyes. "The unclean spirit. The succubus."


	8. Chapter 8

Sometimes, Mulder forgot just how tiny Scully was. It was easy to lose track of her physical stature in the shadow of the mental giant that he sparred with every day. She had an aura of confidence and authority like an aura which obscured the size of the woman beneath it, and on a day-to-day basis he thought of her height-- if he thought of it at all-- as simply Scully-sized.

Then there were the odd days he would blink, and stare, and marvel at how little she was. The curl of strong, slender fingers around a steering wheel, or the incongruous sight of tiny hands gripping a seemingly oversized semiautomatic. Such little hands. Once, when she had fallen asleep on a flight to Atlanta, one of those absurdly high-heeled shoes had fallen off; he'd leaned over, picked it up, and had been astounded to discover that Scully's shoe was small enough for him to hold on the flat of his hand. Such little feet.

He was currently watching those feet, marveling at how fast those little legs could move. It was amazing -- sort of like watching a hummingbird. Scully was propelling herself down the dimly lit hospital hallway at warp speed, apparently putting as much space as she could between herself and Fred Schmidt, and leaving Mulder in the dust in the process.

"Scully!" he called after her. "Wait up!"

She slowed down and came to a stop, but didn't turn around; she just waited, her head slightly bowed, as he jogged down the hall. He was grinning from ear to ear as he caught up with her, trying to find the perfect smart-ass remark to celebrate those tiny feet, but when he leaned a hand on the wall in front of her, she didn't look up. That could be a bad sign.

He decided to go ahead with the remark, anyway.

"Training for the two-hundred meter again?" he teased, waiting for her to look up, waiting for her eyebrow to slant, waiting for that slight, amused purse of her lips. Hopefully, she'd be in the mood to play; she'd toss a comeback at him, and the mood would lighten before they had to get back to the business of pondering four dead people, an unknown culprit, and a crazy uncle.

She looked up, glaring at him from beneath lowered eyebrows. This did not look like a receptive mood. This looked like a mood which could lead to Scully socking him in the jaw.

Mulder thought of another funny thing to say, this time about Scully's tiny fists. He opened his mouth, took another look at his partner's dark scowl, and decided against the comment.

"What is it, Mulder?" Scully finally asked, peevishly.

He pointed back down the hall. "What'd you think of Fred Schmidt?"

"That was a waste of time, Mulder." She tipped her head up to glower at   
him, her eyes glittering. "If he had in some way witnessed the crime, I could see the point, but--"

"He says he was attacked by a spirit being," Mulder insisted. "I think it's worth investigating."

"He's delusional, Mulder. He had an erotic dream about his nephew's wife, that's all."

Mulder almost laughed out loud. Despite her obvious opinion of the Fred interview, she'd still listened, analyzed, put together clues. Classic Scully. "Right. Marty Schmidt. You caught that, too?"

Scully sighed. "It was fairly obvious. Green eyes, dark hair. He fantasized about Marty and felt guilty enough about it to come up with this ridiculous story." Her eyes shifted away, glancing vaguely down the hallway, and it occurred to him just how tired she was.

"Do you think he was lying to us?" Mulder asked, taking advantage of her inattention and scanning her face for further danger signs. Her color was off. The skin around her mouth looked too tight. He felt a twinge of unease and guilt, and sighed.

"Lying? No." Scully's mouth twisted, her gaze still categorizing the air molecules in the hallway. "Not deliberately. I think that he honestly believes he was attacked by some kind of paranormal entity, but..." She trailed off, rubbing the bridge of her nose wearily.

There was a memory dancing around in the back of Mulder's brain, peeking at him coyly around the disorganized piles of information, just out of reach. He snapped his fingers as it came into focus. "Skinner."

She snapped back to attention, and stared at him as though he'd lost his mind. "Excuse me?"

"We've seen this sort of thing before, Scully." The memory was coming up in Technicolor now, doing a tap dance like Ginger Rogers. "Come on, Scully," he prodded. "Remember?"

Scully blinked, her eyes flickering off to her right as she considered it. "The prostitute," she said at last, meeting his eyes again. "And Sharon."

Mulder waited for her to make the connection; the memory had met up with a few others and they were doing a kickline in the middle of his brain. "Well," he said at last, "you see?"

"See *what*?" Scully asked, her voice going up in pitch. "Mulder, that case has absolutely nothing to do with this."

Terrific. And here he'd thought she was with him on this. He sighed, and laboriously retraced his mental steps, rewinding the kickline and the tap dance and shunting the thing back into plain black and white. "Skinner had a recurring dream in which an old woman would..." he gestured vaguely, "... would straddle his chest and suffocate him."

"Yes..." Scully agreed, as though humoring a small child.

He ignored the tone. "Fred Schmidt just told us practically the same story, Scully."

"But-- but-- that--" She flailed a hand in the direction of the room they had just left, her words deserting her. "He didn't say anything *like* that! He said--"

"He said," Mulder supplied, feeling rather triumphant, "that he had a dream about a woman on his chest who pressed on him until he couldn't breathe."

Scully took a deep breath, making an obvious effort to compose herself. "All right, I will admit that it is possible that Fred Schmidt has a sleep disorder vaguely similar to the one that Skinner suffered from, but--"

"A succubus, Scully."

She snorted. "The only succubus that I know exists is that lousy art film William Shatner did in Esperanto."

"That was 'Incubus,' not 'Succubus.' Come on, you just heard Fred Schmidt say it himself."

"Mulder," she said in that warning voice, "what he was describing was something called sleep paralysis. It's a conscious state of involuntary immobility occurring just prior to falling asleep, or immediately after it. In normal REM sleep the brain sends out a signal immobilizing the entire body except for the eye muscles; this is a sort of short-circuited version of the process."

Scully had fallen into that particular recitative style that she always used at times like this, her head cocked slightly to the left and her eyes unfocused. Mulder watched her as she spoke, again marveling at her; this time not at her tiny size, but at the gigantic stature of her mind. It was always such a glorious experience, listening to her rattle off encyclopedic amounts of information, even if he didn't agree with the theory she was putting forward. Kind of hot, too, but that wasn't something he liked to dwell on.

Mulder wondered, briefly, if Scully's memories ever did tap dances.

"Essentially," she continued, "the brain is awake and completely aware of its surroundings, but the body is still deep in REM sleep and therefore out of the conscious control of the individual. Any attempts at deep breathing or any other voluntary movements are therefore unsuccessful, and the individual perceives this lack of motor control as paralysis, and the lack of voluntary breathing as a sensation of pressure on the chest."

Tap dances? Probably not. At least, not when she was in a mood like this one. Scully's mind always seemed to be well-organized, like an extensive, tidy bank of filing cabinets, all indexed and cross-indexed and available at the drop of a hat. His own mind, on the other hand, often reminded him of his bedroom-- well, what was supposed to be his bedroom-- the information distributed in random boxes, stacked in haphazard piles, all connecting in surprising and unexpected ways.

Scully's eyes narrowed; she must have thought he wasn't paying attention. "I'm listening," he assured her. "Go on."

"There's not that much to say, Mulder. The pressure on the victim's chest often leads to feelings of intense fear and occasionally to visual and auditory hallucinations of some kind of malevolent creature crouching on the chest, trying to strangle or smother him." She paused, reconsidered. "Or her. Sleep paralysis is an equal-opportunity disorder."

Another scrap of information teased at him, tickling him from behind. Words. A phrase. Something about women... women of good something or other. For some bizarre reason the image coming to mind involved a horse and cart. Buggy? Cab? Carriage? Yes, that was it. Carriage. "Women of good carriage."

"I beg your pardon?" Scully asked.

"It's Shakespeare," he provided, fishing around in his memory for the rest of the quote. "'This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, that presses them, and learns them first to bear, making them women of--'"

"-- 'of good carriage,'" she finished for him. "Yes, I think I remember reading the quote in someone's overambitious doctoral thesis on the subject. I believe it's from Julius Caesar."

"No." He grinned at her, feeling the balance of power shift back to him with a single word. "Romeo and Juliet."

She blinked. "Oh."

Swish. Two points for Fox Mulder.

It was all part of the game they played, the intellectual one-upmanship. Almost more fun than basketball, in its way. They would each find a starting position, dredge up as much information as they could remember on their respective points of view, and then proceed to play the game, each trying to use information to discredit the other's opinion, and to shore up their own. On every case, they would play several rounds of this game; each round would find their starting positions just a little closer, a little more similar. At some point enough evidence would be in play to agree on the basics, and the game would become a purely philosophical one.

In its own way, it beat basketball hollow. Scully, after all, flatly   
refused to play basketball with him.

"It's an almost universal phenomenon, Scully," he told her, stalling a little as he dug up the memory, dusted it off, turned it over in his hands to test its weight. "They did a study about twenty years ago. Almost every culture has a myth or legend associated with the 'hag' experience, with almost the exact same characteristics described in stories from Korea to Ireland to the West Indies."

"Cultural sources," Scully shrugged. "Such experiences can be induced by the simple knowledge of the traditional stories, coupled with the stimulus of an episode of sleep paralysis--"

"Scully," he interrupted, "when they did this study, half the people who'd had a 'hag' experience had no prior knowledge of any of those traditions. They're common even in present-day industrialized countries where there is no such commonly accepted cultural mythos."

She gave him *that* look, the one that meant that she had caught him contradicting himself again. "I find that hard to believe, considering we've spent hours discussing how the UFO phenomenon has replaced myths and folklore in the explanation of unusual events in today's modern culture."

"You're misquoting me, Scully; I was the one who said that the UFO phenomenon was the basis of most of the myths of--" He shook his head abruptly, realizing that she had baited him off the track of his original argument. "Never mind."

Two points, Dana Scully.

Scully made a small, almost amused sound in the back of her throat. "At any rate, Mulder, I think we can safely assume that Fred Schmidt's nocturnal attacker was merely a hallucinatory product of sleep paralysis."

"I don't think so." He leaned a little closer to her. "Scully, I think this might be the key to everything that's happening around here."

She stared at him. There! A perfect shot from half-court, nothin' but net. He leaned back slightly, satisfied. It never took Scully very long to recover from one of his sudden pronouncements, but the stunned expression on her face in those precious seconds was better than iced tea and sunflower seeds.

Her mouth had dropped open a few centimeters; as he watched, she recovered and snapped it shut again. "Mulder," she said in her I'm-the-only-sensible-one-here voice, "whether Fred Schmidt was attacked by a spirit being, as he believes, or had an episode of sleep paralysis, the point is that it has nothing to do with the murders. This is a dead end."

"What if," he said, carefully picking his way through the topical minefield, "what if the entity that attacked Uncle Fred is actually the murderer that we've been looking for?"

"What are you saying, that this was an actual person instead of a product of his imagination?"

He stalled. "Not a person, no."

"What, then? A succubus?"

Mulder wished that someday he'd remember to do a little research before he got into these arguments. The game had shifted back into Scully's hands; she was poking holes in his wall of defense right and left and it was time for a full time-out. "Look," he said abruptly, "at the moment I'd really like to know more about Fred's medical condition. Is there any way you could get a look at his charts, find out the diagnosis, any medications he's on?"

To her credit, Scully followed him over the conversational speed bump, scarcely missing a beat. "Yes," she conceded grudgingly. For some reason, her mouth twisted into a frown. "We can ask at the-- at the nurses' station."

"Ahh," he grinned, happy to get an easy answer for once. "What was that nurse's name again? Lois?"

Scully gave him a very dark look that he did not understand in the least, ducked under his arm, and stalked off down the hallway.

 

"Oh," Lois said as Mulder and Scully approached the nurses' station, "you're back."

It wasn't the enthusiastic response Mulder had been hoping for. He hadn't expected her to get up and do cartwheels, but she could at least act a little more friendly. As it was, it sounded as though the young nurse would rather have dead fish dumped on her desk than deal with a certain pair of FBI agents.

Mulder gamely put on his warmest grin, hoping to thaw the ice a little bit. After all, it never hurt to make nice with the locals. Just had to turn on the ol' Mulder charm a bit. "Hello, Lois," he said suavely.

To his surprise, the nurse's thin excuse for a smile faltered, and completely disappeared. Shit, maybe he'd gotten her name wrong. It *was* Lois, wasn't it? Or was it Louise? Or Lola? Maybe that was what Scully had been reacting to, earlier. She would have warned him, though, wouldn't she?

He casually let his gaze slip down to the name tag on the lapel of the nurse's uniform. Lois. He read it again, just to make sure. Still Lois. So he'd had it right. What was wrong here? The ol' Mulder charm must be losing its effectiveness.

Mulder ventured a glance at Scully, hoping that she would salvage the situation. Scully scowled at him, her face like a thundercloud, lightning in her eyes.

What in the hell was going on? He turned back to the young nurse behind the desk. She looked at him as though she'd somehow heard about how he usually treated hospital staff. He felt the sudden urge to explain that he had the greatest respect for the medical profession, it was just that he'd been on a short fuse every time he'd been in a hospital lately, and if the doctors would have just pulled their heads out of their asses and told him what he wanted to know instead of wasting time telling him to calm down, everybody would have been a lot happier.

Instead, he put on his most neutral expression and made a great show out of studying the countertop.

God, he hated hospitals.

Scully leaned over the counter, touching the edge of it lightly, as though for balance. "We need to see Fred Schmidt's medical chart." She gave the nurse a quick flash of teeth-- not quite a smile; it seemed more like Scully was baring a sharp pair of fangs-- and added, "Please."

Lois's eyes flickered to the telephone, apparently considering a quick call to her supervisor; she chewed briefly on her bottom lip and seemed to come to some kind of decision. She swiveled her chair around, plucked a chart off of a wire carousel, and spun back to the front. "All right," she said, depositing the chart on the counter in front of Scully with a lightweight metallic clatter. "There you are. Just don't walk off with it."

Scully picked up the chart with the tips of her fingers, exuding the ingrained dignity of a queen, and aimed a delicately arched eyebrow at Lois. The young nurse had the grace to look embarrassed.

Mulder hung in the background, hands deep in his pockets, shifting his weight from one foot to another. Hospitals. Shit. The urge to get the hell out of this place was so strong that it made the backs of his knees ache. Deep breathing was called for, but Mulder could practically feel that hospital smell pricking at his skin already, and he absolutely refused to breathe in any more of that odor than he had to.

He felt queasy. Psychosomatic symptoms. Some people went into a hospital sick and come out well; others went in well and came out feeling sick. Some kind of irony there. How long did it take to read a goddamn chart, anyway?

"Hope he's got good insurance," he said suddenly, surprising the hell out of himself. He hadn't really meant to say anything; the words had simply fallen out of his mouth without warning. He smiled belatedly at the nurse, feeling like an ass. "From his job, I mean. For this."

Lois stared at him like a cornered animal. Oh, fantastic. As if things weren't screwed up enough already, now he was *scaring* her. Jesus. Wasn't he doing this right? Had he somehow plugged in his small-talk generator backwards this morning? Had he blown some kind of fuse in his brain?

Scully was staring at him, too. He could feel it on the side of his face like the heat of the sun on a winter afternoon, sharp and precisely defined. She'd been staring at him a lot today. Had he missed a spot shaving? He fought the urge to run a hand over his face. He'd have to check it out, the next time he was near a mirror.

"If he even has a job, that is." Jesus, was that still his voice? He couldn't believe it. Find the off-switch, pull the plug before this gets any worse.

"I think--" Lois, surprisingly enough, was actually responding to his question. "I think he does temp work, down in Tehtonka."

"Really," Mulder said inanely. "I, uh, I didn't know that there was a temp agency in town." What the hell were you supposed to say about that? "They get much business?"

She shrugged. "I don't know, I guess so. My cousin Amber works in the main office, and she's there all the time. I couldn't even get her to go to the movies last Friday 'cause she was working late. I guess Taymor works her half to death."

Mulder's jaw came unhinged. "Excuse me?"

There was a loud clatter as Scully practically dropped the chart onto the counter. Her eyes were wide and very blue. "Did you say *Taymor*?"

"Yes..." Lois looked from one to the other, shrinking back warily.

"As in..." Scully seemed almost reluctant to say it. "... *Jim* Taymor?"

The nurse's left hand was creeping toward the phone. "Yes," she said in that special humor-the-crazy-people voice. "Why..." She licked dry lips. "Why do you ask?"

Ideas were exploding like fireworks in Mulder's brain. He turned and stared at Scully. Scully stared back. Barely thinking, he grabbed her wrist and headed for the door at full speed, pulling his startled partner after him like a water-skier.

"Thanks," he yelled over his shoulder. "You've been a lot of help."

 

"Will you let go?" Scully yelped, halfway into the unpaved parking lot. She could almost always keep up with Mulder, but when he was hauling her along like this, she could barely keep her feet under her. She tried to wrench out of his grip, but she couldn't get enough leverage, not when she was skidding along like a stubborn puppy on a leash. "Dammit, Mulder--!"

Her self-defense reflexes were screaming at her to rip off his leg at the knee and beat him over the head with it, but she fought off the idea. Time for Plan B. She grabbed his wrist with her other hand and hit the brakes, her suede pumps grinding into the gravel and bringing up a cloud of pale dust. Yet another pair of shoes that would never be the same again, but the sacrifice was effective. Mulder slowed, and stopped, and looked at her blankly.

"Mulder," she growled, "have I mentioned that I'm old enough to cross the street by myself?"

"What?" He blinked, but his eyes didn't focus properly; he seemed to be fixed on his own thoughts, only aware of her in a peripheral way.

Scully was all too aware that she was, for all intents and purposes, holding hands with Mulder in the middle of a deserted parking lot. Well, not exactly holding hands, but close enough. His long fingers were still looped around her left wrist; her right hand was gripping the side of his wrist, right where she could feel the muscles in his forearm shift under his shirt cuff. She was too close to him again, too aware of his strength and of the heat he gave off, and much too aware of the spot where his radial pulse drummed away under her fingertips.

If she bent her head just a little, she could put her mouth to that spot, feel that pulse against her lips, steal a little taste of his skin... The very thought was so explicitly detailed, so solid, that she almost drowned in it.

No. Not now.

She pried his fingers off of her, pulled away, and deliberately put several feet of space between them. He was looking at her, focusing on her at last, but she avoided eye contact; instead, she studied her wrist, rubbing it as if to restore circulation.

"Are you all right?" he asked, a note of real concern creeping into his voice.

"I'm fine." And she was, really she was. As long as he didn't touch her again, she'd be just peachy. "What's going on, Mulder?"

He was still looking at her; she could feel it, like a brand on her skin. "Do you remember the file on the other victims, Scully? Employment, jobs?"

Of course she remembered the file. She'd practically memorized the damn thing on the plane. "They were... they didn't *have* jobs, Mulder. One was an occasional substitute teacher and the other was fired from his last job two months ago."

He raised his hand, and she thought of the pulse in his wrist, and shivered. He held up a single finger. "Marjorie Bailey worked for Jim Taymor." A second finger. "Fred Schmidt got jobs through Jim Taymor's agency."

"Fred Schmidt," Scully said patiently, "is not a victim."

"We can argue about that later, Scully. Whether or not he has anything to do with this, I have a hunch that Joshua Schmidt went with his uncle to that agency, maybe even worked for them himself." Before she could protest, he held up a third finger. "Lola Gruber. She can't possibly have made that much money from substitute teaching in a small town. What do you want to bet that she went to Taymor's place looking for other employment?" A fourth finger. "Greg Marks. No job, living with his sister, art supplies to buy. How long do you think he was willing to wait until work came in?"

She considered it. Granted, it was the first time that a name had come up twice in the investigation, but it was hard to believe that the local police could have missed a connection like that, especially in such a small town. "Mulder, I don't think--"

"It's a hunch," he insisted. "Come on, Scully, what've we got to lose?"

She glared at him wordlessly. A slow grin spread over his face like jam on warm bread, sweet and insufferable. She was going to give in. She knew it, he knew it, but the hell if he was going to see her surrender.

Scully pivoted neatly and stormed off toward the rental car.

"Hey!" Mulder called. "You might want these."

She turned, barely in time to notice the car keys flying at her. She snatched them out of the air, one-handed, and kept walking.

"Nice catch, Scully."

"Just get your ass in the car, Mulder," she snapped. "It'd be a real pity if I accidentally left you behind and had to interview Jim Taymor all by myself."


	9. Chapter 9

Taymor's Staffing Service  
9:13 AM

Almost all the buildings in Tehtonka's one-street "downtown" were boxy limestone affairs the color of dry coffee creamer. Most had faded signs and dated merchandise, but there had been some effort put into revamping several of the buildings; snappy canvas awnings and brightly colored plastic signs stood out strangely against the worn stone. It struck Scully as vaguely embarrassing, like a wrinkled grandmother appearing at a wedding with flaming red lipstick and a clown's-spot of rouge on each withered cheek.

Taymor's Staffing Service occupied a building catty-corner from the only gas station in town and directly across Main Street from a mostly deserted parking lot. There were twelve diagonal parking slots along the street in front of the building; only one was occupied. Scully parked the rental car six slots away.

"Protecting the paint job?" Mulder asked as she threw the Crown Vic into park.

She rolled her eyes and got out of the car.

The building had previously housed some sort of department store or clothing boutique; a name-- "Smitty's"-- had been etched into a large limestone block over the front door, centered in one leg of an 'L' of display windows lined with chipped, cracked green tiles. The display area inside was square and raised about half a foot, like a stage. Twenty years ago, it might have been populated with mannequins; today, the space was a receptionist's area, the only concession to privacy a waist-high set of faded red curtains strung along the windows.

Inside, the unoccupied reception area was flooded with file folders of every conceivable color. A huge pile of unopened mail teetered perilously in the receptionist's in-box. So many drawers of the numerous file cabinets were open that Scully expected them to tip over at any moment.

Not that she gave a damn.

Scully was feeling restless. Her neck ached, her feet hurt, and she was slightly nauseous from all the coffee. There was a fuzziness in her mind, like white cotton or white noise. Maybe this was a second wind, but it didn't seem worth it. The exhaustion was still out there, merely suspended for the moment like an anvil over a cartoon character's head; she had the vague feeling that if she looked up and consciously noticed it, the whole thing would crash down on her and knock her flat.

She stood still, instead, and suppressed the urge to shift from foot to foot.

"Hello?" Mulder called, his voice pitched to carry. It echoed in the empty room.

A sleek dark head popped up from behind the receptionist's desk, narrowed eyes glaring suspiciously at Mulder and Scully. A teenage girl. Smooth, stylish haircut, slightly too much makeup lining her green eyes. She unfolded from her crouched position like a cat, dark clothes clinging to a dangerous figure. The six-inch height difference between the regular floor and the reception area made her seem to loom like a giant as she leaned forward over the desk, balancing lightly on fingers spread like claws.

"Yes?" the girl sneered in that impatient tone of voice that teenagers habitually use on doddering fools past the age of twenty-five. Scully felt a white flash of irritation well up like stomach acid.

Scully snapped her ID up and open, Mulder following suit half a beat behind her. "We're from the FBI," she said, icy cool and mentally daring the kid to piss her off. "We're looking for Jim Taymor."

"Why?" the girl asked belligerently, without hesitation. "He hasn't done anything."

Scully's eyes narrowed, sizing this kid up and not bothering to conceal it. "We're not saying he has," she snapped. "We just need to ask him a few questions."

The girl's expression hardened into a stubborn mask. The face was familiar, somehow, and the expression was familiar too, but the white noise in the back of Scully's head was too loud for her to pin down the reference.

"He's busy," the girl informed Scully, her eyebrows lowering into a dark scowl.

Scully mirrored the expression, and spoke with ice-chip enunciation. "Maybe you should check with him. This should only take a few minutes."

The girl just glared, steady as a rock. "He's *busy*," she repeated as though to a particularly dense three-year-old. "He'll *be* busy until about nine-thirty. If you want to wait, that's your business. There are chairs over there." She jabbed a finger at the far wall.

Scully was sick of craning her neck to look up at this girl. She deliberately stepped up onto the 'display' platform and put one hand on the reception desk, an obvious invasion of the teenager's space. "Well, then," she said acidly, "maybe *you* could answer a few questions for us." She gave the girl a thin smile. "While we're waiting."

The girl held her ground and refused to be intimidated -- a sign of either a fearless natural leader or of a seasoned con. "You can ask whatever you want; that doesn't mean I'll answer."

Scully felt her temper flare like a solar storm. "What's your name?" she asked, too loudly, the anger bleeding through into her tone.

The girl took a long look at Scully, a measuring look.

Scully brought her ID back out of her pocket and tapped the edge twice on the desktop.

The girl's eyes shifted to the ID; she scowled. "Amber."

The white noise in Scully's head cleared for a moment. Amber, Lois's cousin. And, wait, hold on, there was something else-- The face and expression she'd recognized a moment ago suddenly focused into the distinct mental pictures of a black-and-white yearbook photograph and a sheriff's furrowed brow. "Amber *Volney*?"

Amber's expression turned wary. "Do I know you?"

"We've been working with your father," Mulder said helpfully. He was still on the main floor, managing to look non-threatening and friendly, picking up the 'good cop' act as though it had been designed for him. For just a second, Scully hated him. "He mentioned you," Mulder added.

Amber eyed him, suspicious. "Small world," she said tightly.

Mulder smiled his most charming smile. "So, Amber. I take it you work here."

The teenager looked at him as though he'd just walked in from Mars. Mulder's smile slipped a little; Scully caught a glimpse of something dangerous in his eye before the grin went back into place. He waited.

"I don't have to talk to you," Amber announced suddenly, folding her arms across her chest like a barrier.

"You're right," Mulder agreed pleasantly. And grinned. And waited.

Scully made a subtle show of tucking her ID back into her pocket.

The girl mulled it over, her eyes banked like hot coals. Her mouth worked in an angry chewing motion before she spoke again, loud and defensive. "I'm here on a work program. Sixth and seventh periods, three days a week." Her eyebrows arched. "Happy?"

Mulder just smiled.

"You're early today," Scully said, more snidely than she'd intended. Like a challenge.

Amber glared at her. "I'm not skipping school."

"Oh, you're not?" Scully asked mockingly. The white noise in the back of her head was back, roiling in sync with the acid in her stomach. Somewhere under all of it she knew she was pushing too hard, but that was okay. She wanted to push. She was frustrated; she had to push *something*. "How old are you? Fifteen? Sixteen?"

The kid's face went dark with pure hatred. "I'm *eighteen*."

Scully snorted.

"*I*," Amber snarled, "am putting this place back together since the person who took it apart is dead and dead people don't come in to finish reorganizing shit. I got the whole day off of school because I'm *needed* here. Is there a *problem* with that?"

Scully opened her mouth to tell this punk-mouthed kid just who and what was the problem around here, the blood speeding up in her veins and singing with adrenaline and a kind of joy in the release--

And Mulder's hand closed gently on her shoulder.

"Well, Amber," Mulder said charmingly, too loud and too close to Scully, "I know you have lots of work to do so we'll try to keep this short."

Too close. Her blood was already up; his touch and his warm proximity made the air whistle in her ears as though she were falling. Her pulse pounded in her neck and her breath wheezed shallowly, like an old woman's.

Scully yanked away from him and stepped off the platform, her back rigid. One step away, then another. She told herself that she was just turning the line of questioning over to Mulder. She wasn't running away. She *never* ran away.

She rubbed angrily at her neck and took another step. The muscles under her hand tensed even more, like a seam puckering and bunching as the thread caught on a nail. It just made her even angrier. Dammit.

Another step would be too much tension to bear. She swiveled neatly and caught the tail end of a puzzled look from Mulder that made her want to scream and tear her hair in fury. Her inability to put a name to her own frustration made her furious. It was just like him to spend years reading her emotions like some kind of damn psychic empath and then abruptly turn and stare at her without comprehension. Some profiler *he* was.

To make matters worse, he turned his back on her and went on questioning that little snot-nosed twit as though nothing was wrong. Bastard. Scully's heart squeezed painfully and she folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself a little to ease the ache.

Amber had started shuffling files again, a method of taking control of her surroundings and dismissing Mulder in a single move. It was very clear that, in her mind at least, the conversation was over.

Nonetheless, Mulder persisted. "How long have you worked here?"

The girl kept at her busywork, practically ignoring him. "All semester."

"Did you work a lot with Marjorie Bailey?"

Amber snorted. "Not if I could help it."

Mulder doled out the charming smile again. "I take it you didn't like her."

"She was a *freak*," Amber said flatly.

"I see. Did you notice anything strange in her behavior last Friday?"

"You mean stranger than she usually acted?"

Mulder smiled faintly. "I mean, did she seem nervous or distracted?"

The girl's eyes flickered at 'distracted,' but she shook her head. "No."

"Did she get to work late, or leave early?" Mulder pressed.

"No."

"Do you know of anybody who had a grudge against her?"

Amber's eyes flickered again, but she shook her head. "No."

Scully smelled a lie in progress. She walked to the reception desk, angling so that she was closer to Amber but still nowhere near Mulder. One step up, and she was back on Amber's level. "Could you tell us about Marjorie's relationship with Jim Taymor?" she asked, watching for that flicker again.

This time the flicker became a lightning bolt. Amber glared at Scully full-bore, her jaw set angrily. "They didn't *have* a relationship," she snapped.

Bingo. Scully crossed her arms and leaned her hip against the edge of the desk. Raw adrenaline sawed at her stomach, and she welcomed it. "What I mean is, did they get along well at work?"

"I guess."

"Did you ever see them fight?"

"They didn't *fight*," the girl growled. "Jim barely knew she was *there*."

"Is it possible that the two of them could have been closer than you knew?" Scully leaned in, letting her tone of voice insinuate the more intimate question.

Amber followed the train of thought quite nicely, like a kitten chasing a string. She turned beet-red. "You think they were having an *affair*?" she choked out in bitter chunks. "*Them*?"

"I'm asking your opinion," Scully said calmly, noting the girl's reaction and getting an evil little thrill out of it. Oh, this was good. She had this kid's number now; she knew all her buttons and how to push them.

"It's not even possible," Amber hissed. Her neck was bright pink; as Scully watched, the color flooded past the girl's collarbones and stained her neck down to the collar of her t-shirt.

Scully tilted her head slightly to one side, slowly, deliberately, enjoying every moment like a bar of dark chocolate. "Are you sure?"

"He never would have looked at her. Never."

Scully lifted an eyebrow and ruthlessly pushed the final button-- she looked at Amber with pity. The disdainful, knowing pity of an older woman for a blundering kid.

She didn't say anything. She didn't need to.

Amber exploded. "She was so *stupid* to think she'd get anywhere with him."

"Really." Scully let her voice drip with scorn.

"She'd *never*," the girl ranted. "It's like she thought he'd go for her 'cause there wasn't anybody else, but that was bullshit."

Scully snorted delicately, as though she knew better.

Right on cue, Amber powered up again, trying to prove some kind of point. "It's not just her, they're *all* after him. The substitute teacher. And what's-his-face, the fag. They all thought they were so subtle. Hanging around here all the time when we don't even have jobs for them, hello!" She glared at Scully in poisonous triumph, her chin up and her eyes slitted.

Scully sniffed, purposefully looking a little irritated and disappointed. She let the expression drop as she turned away from the girl, flashing Mulder a victorious grin. Her head was still buzzing and her stomach still churning, but her ego, at least, had been soothed. There was a little guilt hovering somewhere around the edge of the white noise in her head, whining like a mosquito, but she ignored it. Manipulating that girl had been no worse than dragging the truth out of any other reticent witness.

She ignored the niggling thought that she didn't usually feel so damned pleased with herself when she got the information she wanted. And that the information she'd manipulated out of this girl was scarcely more than office gossip.

Mulder met her gaze, but his expression stopped her cold. He looked surprised-- surprised, and disappointed.

She flinched and turned away from that look.

"Your father told us that Joshua Schmidt was following you around," Mulder said, picking up the line of questioning as though nothing had happened. "Is that true?"

"Don't you believe him?" Amber mocked. She seemed to be in a better mood now, secure in her belief that she'd come out on top of her argument with Scully.

"Why was he following you?"

Amber's eyes tracked back to Scully like a heat-seeking missile, and bored into her for a second before switching to Mulder again. There was some kind of nervousness under the aggression; Scully could practically sense it. Her investigator's instincts twitched, urging her to take another shot at deconstructing this kid, but the warning in Mulder's eyes held her back.

She sighed, and stayed put.

"He wanted to talk to me," Amber admitted at last, tossing her hair.

"That doesn't sound very threatening," Mulder observed.

"It wasn't *threatening*," the girl gritted out in a marvelous are-you-  
retarded? tone. "I just didn't want him talking to me. I didn't want him   
around me. I just wanted him to stay away."

Mulder waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. "Why?"

"*Because*--!" Amber exploded, and clamped her mouth shut.

"Did he ask you out?"

The girl sighed, the great exasperated sigh of a tragically misunderstood teen. "He didn't *ask*. He just-- he just kept trying to *talk* to me."

"I see," Mulder deadpanned. "He tried to *talk* to you."

"It was the *way* he did it." Amber gestured dramatically. "All sneaky, and quiet, and casual. He was just so-- UGH." She shuddered.

Scully snorted gently, envisioning the scene. Tall, skinny, acne-covered Joshua shyly approaching poised, gorgeous Amber. Not having the guts to actually ask her out; terrified but desperate to have some kind of contact with her. Sure, the kid had practically stalked the girl, but considering their widely disparate social status-- and after observing Amber's personality up close and personal-- Scully was starting to really feel sorry for the dead boy.

&lt;*Not to speak ill ...*&gt;

"He even came *here*. To the *office*," Amber added, as though this location was somehow of great importance. "He kept hanging out here, with his crazy uncle. He even filled out an application, like we were actually gonna find work for him."

"I'm curious," Mulder said, "what you thought of Joshua's uncle."

Amber made another vicious face. "Like I said. He's crazy."

"He was employed here?"

"If you want to call it that." The phone on the receptionist's desk emitted a loud beep. Amber reached out and hit the speaker button, her eyes daring the agents to stop her. "Yes?"

The intercom crackled to life. "Could you come in here?"

"Just a second," Amber said, and hit the button again. She lifted her chin and fixed Mulder with a forceful look. "May I?" she asked sarcastically.

Mulder shrugged calmly. "Be my guest."

Amber muscled past Scully; as they went eye-to-eye, the girl stared contemptuously at her in a kind of coup de grâce, her eyes the color of envy and new leaves. Scully stared back. Amber's lips pursed thoughtfully; she stepped off the platform and trotted down a short hallway and through a door.

The door shut behind her, and the two agents were alone.

"Nice kid," Mulder muttered.

Scully snorted and took a careful step around the desk, examining the reception area. Too many windows. In the hands of a more skilled interior designer, it might have been a light, airy space; as it was, it made her jumpy. It felt like there were eyes peeking over the waist-high curtains, ducking back down just before she looked for them.

So, this was where Marjorie Bailey had worked, here in plain sight of anyone walking down Main Street or filling up at the KwikMart, on display like the Dog-Lady in a circus sideshow. Just an extra incentive to the jobless population of the county: An exhibit on employment, featuring a Real, Live Worker.

As she looked out the window, one hand resting lightly on an open file drawer, Scully had to fight off the sensation that she was some kind of bonus attraction. Today Only! A Real Live FBI Agent! Come And See For Yourself! Her lips pulled back from her teeth in disgust and she shuddered, turning away from the empty street.

Mulder had stepped up onto the platform along with her, prowling almost noiselessly, taking advantage of Amber's brief absence to snoop without shame. He looked absurdly big and awkward in the little space, like a puppy coerced into a dollhouse by a little girl... and, like a puppy, he was nosing around *everywhere*, looking remarkably innocent all the while.

As Scully watched, he peered into a metal trash can and, apparently less than enchanted with the contents, gave it a little kick. He seemed to sense her gaze on him, and looked up, a smile lighting his eyes. The expression was almost like a warm hand touching her face, gently smoothing at the tightness around her mouth. She swallowed and looked away from him, down at the desk.

Marjorie Bailey's former desk was cheap and wobbly, a plywood do-it-yourself job that had probably come in a box with cryptic instructions and seven different kinds of screws. Her signature version of decor had taken its toll here, too, populating the desk with Beanie Babies, plastic Kewpie dolls, and a stuffed lavender rabbit. No photographs, though. Scully remembered that there hadn't been any pictures at Marjorie's house, either, except for the one of Jim Taymor. Sad.

Mulder's meanderings brought him closer to where she was standing; she felt his nearness pulling at her like a magnetic field and moved away, deeper into the reception area. Looking down, she found her hand on one of those open file drawers that had bugged her earlier. She idly ran a thumb over the files inside, barely looking at the names-- Al Bishop, Judy Doerr, Rebecca Stephens, Rachel Walker...

"Hey," Mulder murmured suddenly. "Check it out, Scully."

Scully turned to look. Mulder held up a two-pound plastic bag of sunflower seeds, apparently gleaned from the desk of the dead receptionist. "Jackpot," he grinned, hefting the bag experimentally. "Whaddaya think, Scully? Evidence?"

"Put it back," she growled, feeling another sliver of patience grind into dust. He looped a crooked smile at her and dropped the bag back into the drawer.

She glared at him and considered kicking his ass, considered cornering him and explaining things to him in a low, angry voice, things like propriety and constitutional rights and his role as an agent of the law. She considered it hard enough that she gritted her teeth, slammed the file drawer and took a step toward him.

He looked up, startled. "Scully?"

The expression on his face stopped her in her tracks. She looked at him for a long moment, thinking about puppies and the puzzled look they gave you when you tried to punish them for something they didn't understand. "Never mind," she said. "I don't remember what I was going to say."

She rubbed fitfully at her temples, trying to ease some of the dry ache. It didn't help. God. She was too tired for this.

"You know," Mulder said conversationally, "I could probably handle this interview on my own." He glanced at her carefully and alarm bells went off in her head. "You can go on back to the motel if you want."

"And what would you do, walk back?" she asked, biting back a more suspicious response.

"It's only a few blocks," Mulder shrugged. "It'll be nice. I can get some fresh air."

"Mulder, it's going to rain," she exclaimed, incredulous.

"Probably not for a while yet," he grinned.

"What about the interview, Mulder?"

"I'll take notes," he promised. "What, don't you think I can handle an interview by myself, just this once?"

"I have my doubts," she said in a dry voice.

"Scully, you wound me," he gasped melodramatically. "I can operate without you just fine. Watch." He stepped slightly to one side and raised the pitch of his voice to a falsetto imitation of her own. "Mulder, are you saying that this man has actually been melted, poured into some alien version of a Jell-O mold, and chilled until firm?" He shifted to his other side and went back to his normal voice. "Gee, Scully, when you say it that way it sounds kind of sexy." Back to the other side and the high voice. "Mulder, shut up."

She smiled despite herself. "Seems like you have this under control. I might as well go back to DC."

"Nah," he rumbled. "But going back to the motel wouldn't hurt."

She examined his expression suspiciously. "Not to sound paranoid, but are you trying to get rid of me?"

Mulder blinked, all innocence. "Why would I do that?"

"Nice try," she told him, folding her arms across her chest. "What are you up to, Mulder?"

He sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck, looking frustrated. "I'm not 'up to' anything, Scully. I was trying to be nice."

She gave him the eyebrow. "In my experience, that sort of 'nice' generally leads to you running off on your own and hurling yourself into danger, which leads to me having to track you down and drag you back out." She let the sarcasm deepen. "You really know how to show a girl a good time."

"That's not it this time," he insisted. "I just... you... you didn't sleep last night."

She stiffened and stared up at him, her eyes wide. "What?"

He just looked at her, waiting.

The white noise in the back of her mind began to roar. How did he know? How did he *know*? "I don't know what you're talking about," she snapped.

"Come on, Scully, give me a little credit," Mulder said angrily. "I may be a pretty self-absorbed bastard sometimes, but I'm not stupid."

"If you're trying to prove your intelligence," Scully snarled, "I can tell you right now that this isn't the way to do it." Hot. God, it was hot in this room. And he was too close. She turned slightly away, unwilling to back up but desperate for breathing room.

"If there's something wrong, I'd like to believe you'd tell me," Mulder growled. Still too close, and his voice had an edge on it like a Ginsu knife.

"I'm not surprised," she told him harshly, turning her back on him. "You'd believe practically anything."

Silence.

Another cartoon image flashed through Scully's mind: time had stopped and she could reach out and pull the words back down out of the air before Mulder could see them or hear them. She could tuck them in her pocket with her ID, throw them at people like little poisoned darts, she'd never have to use her weapon again and God, what was the matter with her that she was thinking like this?

Behind her, Mulder exhaled raggedly, a deeply wounded sound that pricked at her heart with white-hot needles. "I guess," he said thickly, "I should be more selective about some things."

Regret bloomed in her stomach like blood from a gunshot wound. "Mulder--"

She turned, tense muscles creaking, but he was moving away, his footsteps arrhythmic and his shoulders squared with pride and hurt. Oh God. What had she done now?

Caught as she was in a gray whirlwind of shock, Scully didn't hear the door to the office open, didn't notice Amber Volney until she charged up into the reception area, full speed ahead, looking flushed and smoothing her hair. It was too late to move back to the 'public' side of the desk. Scully lifted her chin instead and met Amber's glare head-on.

For a moment the universe trembled on the edge of war. Amber pointedly stood aside, waiting for this intruder to vacate Her Space, angry green eyes drilling holes through Scully. Scully listened for a split second to the fury churning up in her stomach, fueled by anger and guilt and things long suppressed, and she focused on the hinge of the girl's jaw, that spot where an elbow smash would hurt the most--

She bit the urge back, feeling it catch in her throat as though she'd swallowed Tinker Toys. She turned and walked to the edge of the platform, half-expecting Mulder to chivalrously offer his hand to help her down-- he didn't. The air between them hummed with tension, like the nauseating drone of a cicada.

Scully stepped down on her own. Amber, smug and satisfied, ensconced herself behind the desk and pointed down the hall.

"Go on back," she purred. "Mr. Taymor will see you now."


	10. Chapter 10

Office of Jim Taymor  
9:35 A.M.

Usually Mulder walked behind her.

Usually his hand settled lightly at the small of her back, his fingers painting delicate curls of heat along the curve of her spine, his thumb pressing gently between her lowest ribs. Usually his breath barely stirred a few strands of her hair. Usually she could feel his presence behind her, warm and reassuring.

Not today.

Today, he'd just turned and stalked off, leaving her without a backward   
glance.

It stung. It felt, as a matter of fact, like the last time she'd been struck in the face, heat and blood-buzzing pressure exploding in her sinuses and a faint taste of copper in her mouth. She gritted her teeth against the sensation and followed him with angry, measured steps.

When Mulder was storming around like this it was damn near impossible to keep up with him. By the time she was halfway down the hallway he was already blowing through the open office door with only a perfunctory rap on the door frame to announce himself.

She sped up, almost jogging for a few steps, then deliberately slowed to a walk. The hell with it. Better to arrive calmly and a little late than directly behind Mulder and out of breath.

Her heels sounded on the thinly carpeted cement almost as though the carpet wasn't there. Calm footsteps. Professional footsteps. The footsteps of a woman who was perfectly in control of this situation, thank you very much.

Scully stepped through the doorway with her expression composed and her back straight.

Mulder turned, overly casual and oozing arrogance. He made a little "come in" gesture and gave her a jeering smile.

Scully felt her face turn to stone. Automatically, almost without her noticing it, her hand slid into her pocket and snapped out her ID. Mulder, she noticed, was still holding his own ID in his loose I-already-announced-myself grip that always made her think he'd either drop it or toss it casually across the room.

"Special Agent Dana Scully," she announced, and belatedly focused on the person she was announcing herself to.

And blinked.

Who the hell was this?

"Jim Taymor?" she asked incredulously, staring at the man behind the desk. Jeans and a button-down shirt, thick blonde hair, dark blue eyes, clean-shaven. Twenty-five, at the most. An infant. He resembled Jim Taymor, sure, but he must be Taymor's son, his nephew, his--

"Yes, I'm Jim Taymor." The man stood up, and Scully got another surprise: he was short. She'd somehow expected him to be almost Mulder's height, but she could see now that he was barely any taller than she was. "Sorry about   
the wait. Business call."

Scully just stared.

The picture she'd seen had shown Jim Taymor to be attractive enough, but nothing near *this*. Closer inspection revealed fine lines around his eyes and a sprinkling of silver hairs among the gold -- this man was middle-aged and not the kid he appeared to be at first glance. It must be his height. Or maybe the clothes.

Then Taymor's gaze met hers, and she realized that his height and clothes were barely half of it. Those dark blue eyes were simmering with some kind of strange, magnetic energy; the intensity of the man was almost frightening. He smiled at her, a slow, electric smile with just the right amount of teeth showing. Scully could practically smell the pheromones wafting in her direction, dancing a hypnotic molecular dance among the camouflaging swirls of a subtle, dusky cologne.

Good God, the man was sex on a stick. No wonder Marjorie Bailey had kept his picture next to her bed.

Scully tucked her ID back into her pocket as Taymor crossed the room. Those compelling eyes searched hers as he took her hand in both of his. "Very nice to meet you," he said in a lazy voice. His hands were startlingly warm, and large for such a short man; she glanced at them-- the curious reflex of a trained investigator, or a single woman-- and automatically noted manicured nails and a wide wedding band.

Taymor motioned at a pair of heavy-looking wooden chairs in front of the gleaming oak desk -- real oak, obviously well cared for. "Please," he said cordially, "have a seat."

"Thank you," Scully replied, carefully neutral. She started toward the chairs and Mulder cut across her path, plowing past her like a battleship at full throttle. Her head jerked back an involuntary inch, her diaphragm tightening as she put on the brakes and recoiled from the near-collision. Mulder stalked on past her, something dark and bitter in his eyes and the set of his shoulders, something arrogant and hurt.

He refused to meet her eyes.

So that was how it was going to be. Scully smoothed the vestiges of surprise from her expression and followed her partner, moving as silently as a deep-running submarine.

She sat in the chair next to Mulder's, her spine very straight and her face very still. He was sprawled in his chair, an angry caricature of relaxation, his eyes hooded and his elbow crossing across his armrest and hers, jabbing into her space like an accusation. The air between them was very close.

A subtle attempt at scooting her chair over resulted in the discovery that these chairs didn't just look heavy; they *were* heavy. So much for the subtle approach. A second, much less gentle attempt netted an inch or so of space, but also drew a curious look from Jim Taymor.

Scully sighed inwardly and resigned herself to the close proximity.

"Would you like some coffee, Agent Scully?" Taymor asked, pausing with his ass halfway to the chair as though the thought had struck him in midair.

"No, thank you," Scully answered politely, too aware of the coil of tension and acid in her stomach to even contemplate adding more caffeine to the mix.

Taymor continued to hover, his deep gaze never leaving her. "I think we have some juice, or some water?"

"I'm fine. Thank you." Scully was quickly losing track of the number of times she'd thanked this man. Her smile felt stiff, as though her mouth had turned to plastic. She felt the laser track of Mulder's glance at her, but when she stole a quick look at him out of the corner of her eye, he was staring straight ahead, expressionless. A muscle in his cheek twitched once-- that was all.

He sat perfectly still. So did she. The tension sparked between them like electricity crackling between oppositely charged poles; given a way to harness the energy, they could power Tehtonka for a year.

Jim Taymor finished his descent into the well-padded chair and leaned back with a wide smile. "So," he said, "what is it that the FBI would like to talk to me about?"

Scully folded her hands neatly in her lap. "Mr. Taymor, we have been informed that Marjorie Bailey worked here up until the time of her death. Is that correct?"

"Yes. This is about Marjorie, then?"

"Yes, sir, we're investigating her murder. I understand that Marjorie was your secretary-- or was it 'assistant'?"

"Receptionist, assistant, whatever. We don't have official titles around here. It's more like..." Taymor pondered a moment, caught up in some rosy inner vision. "More like a *family*."

Scully arched an eyebrow. A statistic scrolled across her mental landscape like numbers on a stock ticker, something about the majority of murders being committed by family members. If all four victims were indeed within this 'family,' she was going to have to take a close look at the personnel files. "Mr. Taymor--" she began.

"-- Have the police contacted you?" Mulder interrupted, running roughshod over Scully's half-formed question. She snapped her mouth shut like a padlock.

Breathe. In. Out. Again.

Taymor took a moment to focus on Mulder. "What? Oh. Yes, I spoke with the sheriff on Saturday."

"Did the sheriff ask you about Marjorie's actions on Friday?" Mulder asked.

"No," Taymor replied, sounding surprised, "he didn't really ask me anything. Just set up an interview time for Monday-- this afternoon, I mean-- and warned me not to go telling people anything about what I know." He scratched at the hinge of his jaw, his finger rasping loudly on dark-blonde stubble. "Not that I know anything."

"You haven't been in to give your statement yet?" Mulder exclaimed.

"No, not until this afternoon. I assumed he had a backlog or something." Taymor blinked slowly. "I take it that's not standard operating procedure?"

"I hope not," Mulder snorted.

Taymor's eyes slipped sideways, back to Scully as though drawn there by a gravitational force. "Well, then." He was smiling like a game-show host-- a glib back-from-commercials smile, a smile that tolerated interruptions because they paid the bills. "You can ask me anything you need to know." Another wave of cologne and pheromones. "Anything."

Somehow the effect was less than convincing. Scully could practically feel the man reaching out for her, grasping for the control panel in her psyche that would send her spinning down to crash-land in his bed. Reaching, and *missing*, fumbling like a teenager who was bewildered by the clasp of his date's brassiere.

It was annoying. Worse, Taymor didn't seem to notice that his efforts were going unrewarded; Scully saw lazy triumph brimming in the man's eyes. She bit down slowly on the inside of her cheek until her molars almost touched, maintaining her bland expression by sheer force of will. "Mr. Taymor," she said, emphasizing the formal title, "there are a few quest--"

"Was Lola Gruber employed with this agency?" Mulder asked, blithely interrupting again. His casual tone of voice was belied by the fine line of tension drawn between his eyebrows. He was doing this deliberately, oh yes he was. Scully tasted blood and realized that she was gnawing at the inside of her cheek again, the points of her canines biting almost completely through a tiny fold of flesh. She hadn't noticed the pain.

Breathe. Breathe.

"Was Lola Gruber employed here?" Mulder asked again in a tone like carved flint.

Taymor looked at him then with the air of a man who had much better things to do. "Occasionally."

"Was she employed here *lately*?"

Taymor hedged. "I believe so; it's hard to keep track."

"What about Greg Marks?"

"On and off. Not to speak ill, but he wasn't very dependable."

"Fred Schmidt?"

Scully's lips twitched. There went any chance of that line of questioning yielding any useable answers.

"Yes, until recently. He's been hospitalized."

Mulder's fingers drummed on the arm of his chair; Scully expected him to jump out of the chair and start prowling around the office. "Hospitalized for psychiatric reasons, you mean."

Taymor looked faintly irritated. "I suppose so."

Drum, drum, drum. "I can't help but wonder why anyone would keep a man with a history of psychiatric problems on their payroll."

"Fred's a good worker," Taymor shrugged. "He loses a day or two every month or so, but the rest of the time he works like a demon. We actually get a lot of repeat requests for Fred. Harris Construction's requested him six times in the last year alone."

"I'd like to see his file," Mulder said. His fingers continued drumming, falling into a rhythm that sounded suspiciously like the William Tell Overture. Badabump, badabump, badabump-bump-bump. Scully's hands tensed, curving like claws in an involuntary spasm, the only outward sign of her strong impulse to crush those drumming fingers against the arm of his chair.

Taymor gave Mulder a cool, thoughtful look. "Is that just a request or do you have some kind of warrant?"

Mulder's smile was almost predatory. "I'll let you guess."

Taymor considered this. He checked Scully's face for a second opinion; she lifted her chin, tilted her head slightly, and exuded confidence in the nonexistent warrant. It seemed to be enough to convince Taymor. He snorted, leaned forward, and punched a button on his phone. "Amber?"

"Yes?" a familiar voice answered, slightly distorted through the intercom speaker.

"Could you get a file for me?"

A brief pause. "What do you need?"

"Fred Schmidt's personnel file." Taymor's gaze whispered back to Scully and he smiled, as though somehow he was doing her a personal favor by responding to Mulder's request. She ignored it, letting it fade into the background like the pulse of traffic and sirens in a city. Unimportant.

A shuffle of papers over the intercom. "Do you want me to bring it in now?"

Mulder shook his head. Taymor did not appear to notice; his eyes forwarded the question to Scully. She echoed Mulder's silent negation. Taymor tapped a single finger against the intercom. "No, that won't be necessary. Just have it on hand."

He punched the intercom button again to switch it off, his movements smooth and almost burlesquely casual. "Anything else?" he asked, still gazing exclusively at Scully. She felt Mulder shift his weight next to her, his elbow brushing up against her ribs before he yanked it away. Her skin stung at the brief contact as though she'd been swabbed with rubbing alcohol: uncomfortable, overly sensitive.

She sat up straighter and focused on Taymor. "As a matter of fact, if we could get a list of--"

Mulder cut across her question with one of his own. "How long was Marjorie employed here?"

Scully's tamped-down temper flared. "Mulder!"

He looked at her at long last, eyes smoldering, daring her to make an issue out of this. She glared back, matching his intensity, and a short silent battle of wills ensued.

Taymor, oblivious to the power play going on in front of him, leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his jaw thoughtfully. "She was here for something like four years, five-- hell, hang on." He punched the intercom button again. "Amber?"

"Yes??" the girl snapped impatiently.

"How long did Marjorie work here?"

"Um..." There was a thump and a rustle of paper. "Looks like... nine years."

"Thanks." Taymor turned the intercom off and shook his head in wonder. "Nine years. I'll be damned. How time flies."

Mulder and Scully were still locked in furious combat, each waiting for the other to break.

"Agent Scully?"

Scully blinked and turned, feeling a wave of disorientation as she shifted gears. "Hmm?"

Mulder took full advantage of her momentary lapse and charged in with another question of his own. "Did Marjorie act any differently last Friday?"

Taymor's extraordinary eyes were puzzled. "She came to work on time, she did her job, ate lunch here, went home at five. Same as usual."

"I mean," Mulder said slowly, on the bare edge of patronizing, "was she upset, or disturbed, or anxious about anything?"

"I didn't notice," Taymor shrugged, another phrase shimmering like an overtone behind his answer: &lt;*What? Why would I notice that?*&gt;

Mulder looked impatient. One of his feet started tapping a staccato rhythm on the thin carpet. "So what you're saying is that you didn't notice anything out of the ordinary?"

"I didn't really notice *anything*," Taymor admitted. His eyes were blank, windows to a complete void of understanding.

"You were in the office on Friday, weren't you?" Mulder demanded, openly sarcastic.

Scully winced.

"Of course I was in the office. As a matter of fact, I was here until almost midnight, Agent...?" Taymor's voice trailed off on a questioning note.

Mulder's eyes were hooded. "Mulder," he supplied darkly.

"-- Agent Mulder. I had a great deal of work to catch up on."

"Is there anyone who could verify you were here that late, Mr.--" Mulder let his voice trail off in blatant imitation of Taymor.

Taymor registered the hit with a slight tip of his head. "You could ask my wife, Agent *Mulder*."

"She was here?"

"No. She called around eleven."

"Was anyone else working late?"

A tiny pause. "No."

Mulder considered it -- Scully could practically hear the gears turning in his head as he chewed over that pause, made the decision not to pursue it right now, and filed it away for future reference. There was a long moment of silence.

"Anything else?" Taymor asked at last.

"That'll do it," Mulder announced, standing up without fanfare.

Scully remained seated, her face set stubbornly. "*I* have a few questions for you, Mr. Taymor."

Mulder made a frustrated noise and stalked to the back of the office. Scully heard his footsteps change direction well before he reached the door; not storming out, then. The footsteps fell silent; she chanced a surreptitious glance and found him feigning interest in the view out a tiny window, his arms folded casually across his chest. The view, however, could not possibly be that interesting; the little window looked out on a brick wall across the alley, covered in the dusty stringy skeletons of dead ivy.

Taymor beamed at Scully as though he had won some kind of contest for her affections. "Yes, Agent Scully?"

Mulder snorted. Apparently he had registered the fact that the little man had no trouble remembering *Scully's* name.

Scully gave Taymor her most official look, her eyebrows slightly peaked. "First of all, we need a few more files."

"Oh, of course. One moment." Taymor pressed the intercom button with a flourish. "Amber?"

The intercom crackled. "What do you need *now*?" Amber snarled, apparently near the end of her patience.

"A few more files for Agent Scully," Taymor announced. He motioned grandly for Scully to speak into the intercom.

She hesitated, not really comfortable with the idea, and at last shrugged and leaned forward a little awkwardly. "Lola Gruber--"

"Lola Gruber!" Taymor repeated helpfully. The game-show host image occurred to Scully again and she had to fight off the feeling that she would soon have to buy a vowel or phrase her reply in the form of a question.

"-- Greg Marks--"

"Greg Marks!"

"-- Joshua Schmidt--"

"Joshua Schmidt!"

"-- and Marjorie Bailey's file as well."

"And Marjorie Bailey!" Taymor beamed at her again.

Scully managed a weary, insincere smile and wondered what sort of insane twist of fate had bestowed such magnetic good looks on such an idiot. "We'll need to see a list of businesses that use your service, a list of people currently employed by your agency, and a list of people who have left in the past several months."

"Did you get that?" Taymor asked the intercom, after a vaguely confused pause.

Silence, fringed with static.

"Amber?"

"Yeah, I got it." Amber did not sound happy.

"How long will that take?" Taymor pressed, bathing Scully with another one of those long, liquid glances. "Agent Scully is in a hurry."

Scully shook her head. "I'm not in a--"

Taymor waved the objection aside. "Amber?"

"FINE," the girl hissed, and the intercom went dead.

Taymor seemed briefly puzzled by the girl's attitude but shrugged and returned his dazzling attention to Scully. "What else can I do for you?"

Scully realized that she was still leaning slightly forward and corrected it, sitting straight and tall like a good soldier. She crossed her legs neatly for good measure, dimly aware of Mulder pacing behind her, tiger-padding back and forth across the back of the room. "I'd like to ask you a few questions about your working relationsh--"

And suddenly Mulder was right behind her and his voice blasted out like a foghorn. "Mr. Taymor," he said loudly, "do you sleep well at night?"

"Mulder," Scully murmured in a low warning tone.

"Have you ever woken up and been unable to move or breathe?"

Taymor stared at Mulder, completely puzzled. "I don't--"

"Or had sensations of being crushed or being pushed downward into the bed?"

"*Mulder*." The warning in Scully's voice was more pronounced this time, but Mulder seemed oblivious.

"Have you ever had an out-of-body experience? Or--" Mulder was really on a roll now, crashing gleefully ahead without allowing Taymor to get a word in edgewise. "Or have you seen or sensed another presence in the room with you, or felt an invisible entity attempt to strangle you, or dreamed about a woman kneeling on your chest and crushing you?"

Taymor goggled at Mulder, flabbergasted by this lunatic masquerading as an FBI agent. "Agent Mulder, I don't see what any of this has to do with--"

"I'll ask the questions, Mr. Taym--"

"MULDER." Scully couldn't remember standing up, but she was suddenly toe-to-toe with her partner, glaring up at him. "Maybe you should wait outside," she hissed.

He didn't quite look at her. "Really." He pitched his voice low; like hers, it was inaudible beyond the sphere of their personal space.

"I believe so, yes."

He met her eyes then, and there was a bleak expression in them that rocked her back on her heels. "I'm not surprised," he muttered, imitating her voice, tossing her own words back at her. "*You'd believe practically anything.*"

With that, he stalked across the room and stared out that little window at the alleyway again, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. Scully stared after him, the breath sucked out of her as though she'd been punched in the stomach. The exhaustion settled back onto her like a lead cape as she sank back into her chair and turned back to Taymor. Just get this done, get this *done*, get out of here.

Taymor smiled possessively at her. She did not smile back. Something of her attitude finally seemed to filter into Taymor's awareness and his smile turned puzzled.

"Mr. Taymor," she began, "could you tell us about your working relationship with Marjorie?"

Taymor shrugged, still puzzled. "We had a very good working relationship."

"Did you have any disagreements?" Scully pressed. "Workload, salary, benefits, coworkers?"

"No, not a one. Marjorie never complained."

Scully somehow did not find that surprising. Complain? About good ol' Jim? Never. "Did you see one another socially?"

That earned her a startled look from Taymor. "No, not really."

"Community activities?"

"No, can't say that we did."

"Church?"

Taymor smiled as though at some private joke. "The wife and I aren't much for religion, actually."

Scully bit back a harsh response and tried one last time. "Did you ever see Marjorie outside of the office?"

"No, I don't believe so. My wife ran into her a few times at the grocery store, as I recall, but that's probably the extent of it." His smile this time was hopeful; perhaps he expected that, having supplied Scully with what she wanted, she would reciprocate.

She plunged ahead, impatient to get this last important question asked. "Mr. Taymor, were you and Marjorie having an affair?"

Taymor's jaw dropped. "Excuse me??"

Scully spoke slowly and enunciated clearly, her face a mask of glacial calm. "Items were found at Marjorie's home that indicated that she may have been inclined toward a romantic relationship with you."

The businessman stared at Scully with wide, solemn eyes, gaping like a fish, the suave expectant attitude disappearing completely.

"Were you having an affair with her, Mr. Taymor?"

"No." Taymor shook his head. "No. I had no idea that she-- I had no idea." The expression on his face practically screamed surprise, but Scully did not see the guilt that she had expected.

"Well." She stood up, giddy with relief that this endless interview was finally over. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Taymor."

"Oh. Oh, no problem." Taymor also stood, still looking rather shell-shocked but gamely rounding the desk with his hand outstretched for another handshake. Scully gave him a wan smile and let him clasp her hand again, thinking vaguely that if this man's sexual stock always dropped like this between handshakes then the next time she saw him she might not even recognize him as human. "If you need anything else..." Taymor abruptly released her hand in order to dig around in his jacket pocket and came up with a business card. He flashed a charming smile and handed it to her.

Scully accepted the card gingerly, with two fingers, and glanced at it. A full half of the card was taken up by a color picture of none other than Jim Taymor, smiling the same oh-so-charming smile that she was currently experiencing live and up close. The business name and address particulars were squashed into the remaining half, the tiny print looking much like a small troupe of army ants marching across the card. "Thank you," she told him, and looked at Mulder.

Mulder gave Taymor a blatantly insincere smile. "See ya," he said in his Plays Well With Others voice, and started for the door.

Scully smiled one last time at Jim Taymor and turned for the door. Mulder was already through it and apparently long gone; she wondered just how fast she was going to have to walk to catch up with him before he got to the car.

Mulder, however, was standing right outside the office, his head slightly bowed, waiting for her.

Surprise flared through her and she stopped dead in her tracks, looking up at him wide-eyed.

He swept a hand toward the lobby in a courtly gesture. "After you."

She examined his expression suspiciously, looking for a trap. She didn't see one. Mulder's eyes were weary and a little sad, tinged gray with regret.

Cease fire.

Some painful knot in her chest suddenly loosened-- not all the way, but enough to breathe again. She looked at him for another moment and started down the hallway.

After a step and a half, Mulder's hand settled lightly at the small of her back.

 

Amber was waiting for them in the reception area, her arms piled high with file folders. "Here," she announced, and dumped the folders in Scully's arms without any pretense of civility. "Enjoy." She pivoted neatly and stalked off.

Scully did a quick, awkward juggling act to keep the folders from tumbling to the floor in an avalanche of paper. Mulder reflexively held out a hand, palm-out, as though he could control the situation with some kind of anti-gravity super-power. "Steady," he muttered.

Perhaps there was something to that super-power thing after all, because the folders stabilized just as Amber came back. This time she handed Mulder a toaster-sized cardboard box with the legend "King's Parrot Food Yummy Tropical Mix" across it like a banner.

"For me?" Mulder asked, examining the box with sarcastic thoroughness. "Gee, I didn't get you *anything*."

"My dad says you have the parrot. So." She shrugged.

Scully's eyebrows went up. "Is this a *present* for the parrot?"

Amber's face contorted in disgust. "Oh, God, no. I hate that fucking bird." She waved vaguely at the box as though she was trying to flick something nasty off her fingers. "That was Marjorie's. I'm still cleaning out her desk."

Mulder's fingers had discovered the open pour-tab on one side of the box. "I take it she brought the parrot over for a visit now and again."

"Visit, hell, that bird practically lived here."

The two agents exchanged a startled look. "Here?" Scully echoed.

"*Yeah*," Amber intoned, stretching the word into a two-note phrase, high to low, a little song about the stupidity of adults. "Marjorie brought that stinky bird in here almost every day. She thought it would get lonely if she left it at home." She looked pointedly at Scully. "Didn't my dad tell you that?"

Scully shook her head, lips pursed. "It seems," she said carefully, "that there's a lot that your dad hasn't told us."


	11. Chapter 11

Cooper County Sheriff's Department  
10:28 A.M.

 

Mulder had finally figured it out.

It had taken him a while, but he was suddenly, giddily, completely certain what was wrong with Scully.

He eyed her carefully, his gaze brushing the crown of her hair. She was so regal, so vibrantly dignified that in this dingy, badly lit hallway she seemed to glow like an oil lamp. If he didn't know her so well, he might not have noticed that anything was wrong. Hell, he almost hadn't noticed anyway.

The slide and grit of their footsteps was very loud on the peeling linoleum. Granulated dirt was tucked into every crevice of the floor, darkening the jagged edges where pieces of brittle linoleum had broken off. This building was new, as law-enforcement buildings went, but shoddily constructed; for some indefinable reason it reminded Mulder of the basement of the Hoover building.

The rhythmic click of Scully's heels echoed off the wooden paneling like a metronome. Mulder could feel the edge of her pancake holster under her suit coat, brushing against one of his fingers as she walked. He kept his hand in gentle contact with her back, some half-forgotten part of his mind glorying in this little secret that he and only he knew-- not just the location of her weapon, but this other thing, too.

It was obvious. She hadn't slept; she was touchy, antagonistic, even more skeptical than normal; and, for the kicker, she'd been avoiding his touch. Now, Mulder had never claimed to be an expert on women, but in this case the facts spoke for themselves. Hell, they practically *screamed*.

Mulder stole another look at her face. From this angle, most of what he could see was hair, but there was a sliver of pale cheek, waxing to a crescent when she turned her head slightly. A little paler than normal, although heat came off her in waves, particularly where his hand brushed the small of her back.

It all added up.

Scully was obviously coming down with the flu.

They hadn't fought in the car. They had barely spoken. The awkward silence had draped over them like San Francisco fog, guilt and regret occasionally flashing from their individual lighthouses.

Mulder had let her choose their destination as a sort of peace offering. He'd expected her to opt for a quick tour of the two crime scenes they hadn't already seen -- they could tramp around outside, check for any signs of forced entry that the good sheriff and his men had missed, then head inside and nose around the actual crime scenes, see if they could sniff anything out.

Scully, however, had sat pale and serious with her hands neatly folded on top of the folders on her lap. She hadn't said much, but the words she used were precise -- they were going to the sheriff's office. They should speak with Volney, find out exactly what they were missing, and coax the missing statements and crime photos and files out of Volney's hands.

She hadn't looked at him.

Mulder had looked at her, though, his eyes tracing the cool lines of her face, and at that moment the flu revelation had crept out of back of his mind and tackled him, taking him completely by surprise as his eureka moments often did. He had blinked, and looked back at the road, and driven to the sheriff's office in silence.

They were still in silence now. And she was still pale.

His hand twitched involuntarily at her back as he thought protective thoughts and entertained melodramatic visions of making it up to her-- the fight, the flu, everything. He could get her back to the motel and put her to bed, get a glimpse of those silky pajamas before he tucked the sheets up around her chin. He could find someplace in this town that made good chicken-noodle soup, and feed it to her spoonful by steaming spoonful. The heady image of Scully's lips closing around a spoon that *he* was holding was enough to distract him from what had been a purely humanitarian plan, and he guiltily squashed the thought.

Then, of course, he could go off and take care of the case himself.

Mulder let go of the daydream regretfully. Take care of Scully? Right. If he tried to take care of her, Scully would tie his hand to the parrot cage and let Guido bite all his fingers off. Wouldn't happen. End of story.

As they reached the end of the hall, there was a rush of cool air, slipping deliciously through the overheated office atmosphere like vanilla ice cream in hot chocolate. Mulder spotted Volney in a corner next to a rust-laced file cabinet, propping open a metal door with one big meaty hand as he wrestled a chunk of limestone across the floor with his boot.

"Hey there," Volney grunted in surprise, noticing the agents at almost the same moment the limestone reached the door with a grinding thunk. "Didn't expect to see the two of you today." He released the door experimentally; it *thunk*ed back and forth between the wall and the impromptu doorstop several times in swift succession and then hovered in the middle. Volney seemed satisfied. "Sorry 'bout the cold, but some damn fool burnt a bag of popcorn a while back and I can't stand the smell any more." He eyed the agents, scratching thoughtfully at the roots of his moustache. "Autopsy done?"

Scully nodded, her expression grave.

"You here about the results?" Volney asked hopefully, his copper eyes sharp and curious.

"I have a few theories," Scully said. She stood straight and tall, and Mulder felt sudden pride sweep him like sheet lightning. "If we could step into your office to discuss them...?"

Volney nodded curtly. "Sure." Another curl of cold air swept into the room; the door bounced between the wall and the stone, clattering rhythmically. Volney ambled through a door with the word 'SHERIFF' lettered on it, not waiting to see if the agents would follow.

They followed. Mulder let Scully pick the first of two square metal-frame chairs, and sat in the other, noticing with a pang that she scooted her chair a few discreet inches from his, sitting primly on the edge. She did that a lot, sitting half-off the chair, her back straight and shoulders square; Mulder suspected that she only did so because otherwise her feet would not reach the ground. Today, though, the chair was low; today, Scully was radiating ice-cold authority.

"They say it's gonna rain," Volney told them conversationally. He settled into the swivel chair behind his desk and shifted his weight around until he got comfortable; the chair protested with a soprano shriek of frustration. "Not too much, I hope," he added. "It'll be hell on the farmers for planting."

Mulder watched Volney watch Scully, and he caught another glimpse of that razor-sharp curiosity beneath the sheriff's easygoing veneer. He felt a familiar flash of triumph, the victory of a safecracker as a stubborn bank vault finally clicks and cracks open, revealing a hint of the contents.   
Just a hint.

Volney had a personal stake in the results of this autopsy. Mulder couldn't tell what it was, but he was suddenly certain that the sheriff's keen interest was more than professional.

The thought was unsettling.

"So," Volney said at last, "what'd you find on the Schmidt kid?"

"The results of Joshua's autopsy were consistent with the other three victims." Scully's chin tipped up with a touch of arrogance. "The cause of death in each case is unknown, but probably identical. Some aspects of the autopsies seem to point toward poisoning, but every tox screen has come back negative."

Volney leaned back, stroking his moustache; the chair uttered another angry squeal. "So you're saying they *weren't* poisoned."

"Unless," Mulder said, unable to help himself, "they were poisoned with a substance not known to medical science."

Scully shot him a brief gunfire glare and turned her attention back to Volney. "It's far more likely that this is an enzyme that occurs naturally in the body. Potassium, for instance, causes heart failure in a matter of seconds when it's injected into a vein, but a tox screen might miss it because potassium is a normal part of our chemical makeup. We could attempt a more careful chemical analysis of the bodies but, frankly, with the internal organs missing in each case I'm not sure how accurate it would be."

"Couldn't you work backward?" Volney asked. "Figure out what could do this kind of damage?"

"Normally, yes." Scully's tone was level but the twitch of her fingertips was pure sour grapes. "Except that I've never seen anything like this before. I've sent blood and tissue samples to our field office in Kansas City, but they might not get back to us for several days."

Volney made a derisive noise as though he was in the mood to spit, but was too polite to do so in the presence of a lady. There was, briefly, silence. The humming of the wind returned, redoubled, gained harmonic overtones.

"There's a possibility," Scully said at last, "that this could be a binary poison, two substances that are only lethal when they're combined. One component could be administered hours or even days before the other, depending on the quantity and how it entered the bloodstream."

Volney chewed viciously on his moustache.

"Perhaps," Scully continued, her eyes hooded, "a more expedient way of going about this would be to determine a motive for these killings." She waited a beat, and casually let the penny drop. "Which I believe would require unrestricted access to the witness depositions, the remainder of the crime scene photographs, and any other records you may have gathered."

Volney's face went hard. He glowered at Scully for a long moment, then switched his glare to Mulder as though somehow this was *his* idea, but Mulder wisely did not make eye contact. Volney's mouth twisted and he scowled at Scully, attempting to intimidate her into dropping the subject.

Scully did not intimidate easily. "Sheriff, we've been coming across things that were not in your reports, evidence which you obviously have not informed your own deputies of." She looked Volney straight in the eye and let him have it. "I would like to request at this time that you share whatever information you have been holding back."

Volney blew a frustrated breath through his moustache. "Agent Scully," he said, "I have already briefed your partner on whatever trivial information you may be missing."

"Agent Mulder has filled me in on the details which you gave him, sir, but until we have every scrap of information, I believe that there will be the continuing chance that we may be missing something important; trivial though some of these small details may seem, one of them may turn out to be a key piece of evidence or trigger some thought process that leads to the identification of a suspect."

Volney's frown drew deep lines in his face. "I understand your concern, ma'am, but let me assure you that there's no reason to worry. At the risk of repeating myself, I already told you everything I know."

"It is very possible that you *think* you have told us everything, sir," Scully said with icy clarity, "but without the actual physical documents in our hands there is always the chance that some piece of information has slipped through the cracks."

"Slip through the cracks?" Volney snorted. "Hell. Did you see the news this morning?"

No," Scully said dryly, folding her arms across her chest, "as a matter of fact we missed it."

Volney leaned forward to rest his elbows on the desk, his hands clasped together in a callused knot. "Then I'll just have to fill you in. This morning the Channel Ten six o'clock news ran the murder of Joshua Schmidt as their leading story. Now, I'm already upset about the fact that I woke up to an instant replay of one of the longest nights of my life, but when I heard the nice lady on the news hand out a couple of quotes that she said came from the FBI agents working the case, well, that just ruined my whole day."

Scully was unfazed. "Neither Agent Mulder nor myself have made a habit of chatting with representatives of the media, sir. In our line of work we find it somewhat inconvenient."

"I didn't say you had, ma'am, but it's a hell of a case in point. There is a leak, and it's a big one, and I don't know where it is. I know it's probably not the two of you because this was happening long before you showed up, but the fact is I can't afford to let this information out of my hands."

"I assure you," Scully said, etching her words in granite, "we are well versed in taking extra security precautions for confidential documents."

Volney shook his head. "I'm not letting those documents out of this building," he announced.

Scully's chin went up another centimeter, her eyes like blued steel. "Sheriff Volney, I am qualified as a medical doctor as well as a federal agent. Agent Mulder has an Oxford education in psychology and was an analyst with the Violent Crimes Unit for several years. If you are looking for someone more qualified to track down this killer, *sir*, you may have to call Sherlock Holmes and see if he can catch the Concorde from London. As it is, I suggest that you cooperate and give us what we need to do our job."

There was a long moment of silence. The wind thrummed again, pulling music from the door as though it was a bronze harp string, and the door clattered against the limestone several times before settling down. Volney-- this big, graying heap of a man who in another life might have been a stoic bachelor farmer or an assistant director of the FBI-- turned his attention inward, briefly, eyes narrowed as though consulting an inner set of scales.

Scully studied the sheriff, her face thoughtful as she weighed her options. The pallor that Mulder had noticed when they were alone had vanished; Scully was in full federal agent mode, suspending her private weaknesses in the interests of What Must Be Done. It was a breathtaking sight, and Mulder was not immune.

Volney returned from his internal journey and focused on Scully. The two stared at each other in steely silence, the air tense with the clash of wills.

When Scully spoke again, her voice came like a whip-crack. "Sheriff," she said, tilting her head to the side the tiniest bit, "I would like to suggest a compromise."

 

The pile of file folders was not very thick. Scully had tried not to exaggerate it in her mind, but nonetheless she'd expected, well, *more*. Large, important-looking files that would correspond to the amount of effort put into gaining access to them, not this scrawny bunch with crumpled pages straggling out of the pale manila folders.

Mulder was more vocal about his disappointment. "That's it? All of it?"

"I told you there wasn't much to it," Volney said, laying one big, callused hand on the little pile as though it were a favorite dog. "Few pictures, coupla depositions, some notes I typed up. Logs from the crime scenes. Lists of items found at the scene, evidence reports, that sort of thing."

"Nice," Mulder muttered. Scully sighed, and turned away from him to examine their impromptu library. It seemed to be a conference room of sorts: tiny, square, paneled with the same faux wood that covered the walls of the hallway. The ceiling was low and reminiscent of an elementary school, with a single row of recessed fluorescent lights, slightly off-center; one of the rectangular plastic covers had apparently fallen and was propped in a corner, looking isolated and forlorn. An oblong banquet table in the center was surrounded by a number of metal folding chairs, each with "CC Sheriff's Dept." stenciled on the back in a powdery blue.

Scully's gaze accidentally intersected with Mulder's; their eyes locked for a brief second before she lifted a wry eyebrow and turned back to the sheriff with a tight lipped smile. "We appreciate this, sir."

Volney gave her a wry look. "I'm glad to hear that." He jerked a thumb at the door. "You remember our agreement, now. These documents do not leave this room. When you go, they stay. I'm not making any exceptions to that."

Scully felt her smile fading, as though it were being erased. "We weren't asking for any. Sir."

 

The sheriff nodded firmly. "Just as long as it stays that way." He watched them for a moment. "I'll be back down the hall. You yell when you're done." He turned and unceremoniously walked out the door.

Scully glanced at Mulder. He caught her look and tipped his head toward the table, raising his eyebrows slightly in a silent question. She examined the selection of folding chairs and picked one, the legs clanging dully against the chair next to it when she pulled it out and again when she scooted back in after sitting. Mulder sat on the other side of the narrow table at a careful diagonal from her; not directly across, nothing confrontational.

Scully took out her notebook and a pencil and nudged the pile of files across the table at Mulder. He started to reach for one, but hesitated, his eyes flickering up to her face. She shrugged a little and gave the files a harder push. Mulder lifted his eyebrows, processing this. He sifted through the pile and selected one; after a thoughtful look at it, he offered it to Scully.

She accepted it gingerly, with a little nod. Silence fell in the little room, broken only by the rustle of paper as the two agents perused the files.

"Scully, could you pass me the--"

"This one?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

Another lull. Mulder's chair squeaked as he shifted his weight, his knee brushing Scully's under the narrow table. She glanced up at him.

"Sorry."

"Mmhmm."

Silence. The whispery scratch of Scully's pencil as she took careful notes in her little notebook seemed abnormally loud. The fluorescent lights hummed like an old refrigerator.

Footsteps. A skinny deputy glanced idly into the conference room, locked eyes with Scully, and looked away, embarrassed. He walked into the darkened room directly across the hall and flipped on the light, revealing a battered copier with a smudgy rosette of footprints near the paper tray. The machine made loud groaning sounds; the deputy shifted back and forth in a little waiting dance, his eyes fixed on the business end of the copier. A copy emerged; the deputy grabbed it, switched off the light, and left, going to great lengths to avoid looking into the conference room.

Scully felt Mulder's eyes on her. She glanced at him, but by that point he was staring at the folder in front of him. She shrugged it off and went back to reading.

A few moments later she could feel him looking at her again. She set her pencil down perfectly parallel to her notebook, *click*, and looked up. "Yes, Mulder?"

He slid a file across the table, pushing it cue-stick style with a single finger. "Evidence lists," he said shortly.

"What about them?"

Using the same finger, Mulder flicked the file open. The finger ran lightly down a column, seeming to read it by sense of touch, and tapped significantly. "Contents of the drawer of Lola Gruber's night table."

Scully read it out loud. "One bottle of Tylenol. Toenail clippers. Three paperback romance novels." She raised an eyebrow. "Sixty-seven business cards from Taymor's Staffing services, tied with a red... satin... ribbon."

"Mmhmm." He flicked the page over and tapped at a new spot. "Lola Gruber's desktop."

Scully humored him. "Sixteen pencils. Checkbook. Calculator, broken. Three-hundred and ninety-four page handwritten manuscript of a lurid romance, staring a heroine named Lena Grabel and the handsome owner of a temp agency named John Taylor."

"With originality like that," Mulder deadpanned, "I'm sure she'll be published posthumously."

"Mulder, does all this oblique hinting mean that you believe Lola Gruber had a crush on Jim Taymor?"

"Not just her." Mulder single-fingered another anemic file across the table and flipped it open. This time he stopped at a photograph, and tapped it. "Here. This is the wall directly across from Greg Marks' bed."

The shot was in color, starkly lit -- a wall and a door which apparently led to the hallway. The door and door frame were unmarred; the wall next to it was narrow, barely wide enough to accommodate the huge, unframed oil painting.

It was abstract, in garish colors that reminded Scully of other crime scene pictures, bloodier ones. These colors, though, were blues and purples and vivid greens all swirled together, a maelstrom with a man's face leering out of it. A stylized face with vivid blue eyes, in a picture that somehow screamed sexuality without giving her the faintest idea how it was accomplished.

Scully looked up at Mulder; their eyes met and locked. "Jim Taymor," she said, voicing the name hanging fire between them.

Mulder nodded, a feral smile lighting his eyes.

She examined the picture again. "Greg painted this himself?"

"Bingo."

Scully considered it, shuffling ideas and laying them out like a game of solitaire. "Marjorie, Lola, Greg. What about Joshua?"

"That one I don't know yet, but three out of four ain't bad." Mulder tapped his index finger on the file in front of Scully, his expression dark and intent. "Scully, is it just me, or were all of the victims somewhat less than popular?"

She arched an eyebrow. "Meaning?"

Mulder lifted his head and began ticking off points on his fingers. "No significant others. Few, if any, friends. And, judging from what we've heard, all of them were pretty much on the bottom of the food chain in the local dating scene. Beyond the fact that none of them were nominated for Prom Queen, I'm wondering if their common social status might point toward a motive for their murders."

"Mulder, are you saying that what we have here is a serial killer who targets the radically unpopular?"

He spread his hands casually. "The weakest members of the herd are easiest to pick off. Even human predators seem to instinctively target social outcasts -- prostitutes and hitchhikers are classic examples. These people may be the small-town equivalent."

"I don't think--" Scully stopped, her mind whirring and clicking.

Mulder looked at her warily. "What?"

"Have you read Aimee Marks' statement?"

He snorted. "Yeah. Sounds like her brother was having a party for one before he died." He shook his head. "Makes going blind look like a preferable alternative, eh, Scully?"

She shot him a dirty look. "This isn't funny, Mulder."

"I know." For a moment there was something bleak behind his eyes that she recognized from her mirror. Gallows humor could only be bought with the coin of sympathetic humanity-- every good cop worried about those coins running out and leaving them empty. Federal agents, too.

The recognition resonated between them, a single note plucked on the violin string of their connection and radiating into the stillness. Scully looked away, something under her ribs vibrating sweetly with that note; she was surprised to find the string had not been snapped by their earlier battle.

"No witnesses have been found for Lola's murder, or Marjorie's," she said, building a stone foundation with her words. "Joshua's family went to bed at nine and were only awakened an hour later by a scream from his room. Aimee's account is the only clue we have about what led up to these deaths."

Mulder held up a finger, his brow furrowed. His alarmed expression made Scully think of cartoon gauges spinning wildly out of control, whistles shrieking from their drama-frown openings. "Are you going where I think you're going with this?"

"In all four autopsies, there was an extreme congestion of blood in the genital area," she informed him dispassionately. "This may indicate a high level of sexual arousal at the time of death. All four corpses were discovered lying on their backs, on their own beds, in the dark. It may point toward similar activities in the moments preceding their deaths."

Mulder stared at her in thunderstruck silence. "Scully," he blurted at last, "are you saying that these people *masturbated* themselves to death?"

She shrugged.

He gaped at her, hanging in suspended animation on the leading edge of laughter. "You know, I'm pretty sure the Surgeon General would disagree with you. Masturbation is guaranteed not to cause blindness, hairy palms, insanity, or the disintegration of internal organs."

She waved it aside. "You said it yourself, Mulder-- they were all single, and at least three of them seem to have been enamored with Jim Taymor. A high level of sexual frustration requires some form of release, and without a partner..." She trailed off. There was a weird thrumming in the air like someone bowing the lowest string of a cello, something subliminal and frightening. They were both acting remarkably professional under the circumstances, but neither one was really looking at the other-- their gazes were stuttering, skidding off each other's faces.

"If this is a binary poison," she continued stoically, "it's possible that only the first component was actually administered by the murderer. The second component may be enzymes naturally created by the victims' own bodies during a... an instance of auto-erotic activity."

She should have known better than to try the more delicate term; the tension in the room began to ripple and shift into an almost hysterical comic atmosphere.

Mulder's lips twitched as he obviously suppressed a grin.

"Oh, for God's sake," Scully exploded, "this is *not* funny."

"Scully, do me a favor," he said, eyes twinkling. "Say 'auto-erotic activity' again."

"*Mulder*."

He chuckled, crossed his arms on the table and hunched over, tilting his head boyishly. It was a normal gesture, the first truly normal moment between them in an hour. She felt relief swell up in her like a helium balloon, buoyant and slightly ridiculous. "Tell me something," he demanded. "We're finding new details in these files just based on what we know *now*. What happens tomorrow when we know more; do we come back here and look through the files again?"

"I don't know." She sighed, hunching forward in unconscious mimicry of his posture. "I'll try to talk Volney into letting us have copies."

He just looked at her. He didn't have to say it; it was obvious that Volney would never agree.

"I'll think of something," she insisted.

Footsteps rang out in the hallway; Scully looked up to see Volney himself peek around the doorway, chewing on his moustache. She straightened up, feeling absurdly as though she'd been caught passing notes in study hall. "How're things coming?" Volney asked, that razor-edged curiosity glinting through his casual air. "About done?"

Scully reluctantly forced herself back into negotiating mode. "Sheriff Volney--"

A hand settled over Scully's knee. Her head whipped around and she   
stared wide-eyed at Mulder, who was looking at Volney and being very casual about the fact that he only had one hand on the table. As she looked at him, Mulder's hand tightened, his thumb sliding neatly into the sensitive notch along the edge of her kneecap. Scully started to shake. It was nothing-- a silent suggestion to keep quiet, that was all -- but the shock of feeling his hand on her body, and the irrepressible fantasy of the places it could move from there, almost overwhelmed her.

"We're fine, Sheriff," Mulder lied smoothly.

Volney did not appear convinced. "Agent Scully?"

Mulder met her eyes across the table with a minute shake of his head. Oh, the bastard. She'd kill him. She'd kick his ass from here to next Thursday, as soon as she could regroup from this watery weakness threading through her veins.

"We're fine," she managed, sounding slightly strangled. She frowned at Mulder, a piercing no-nonsense stop-screwing-around look, and brushed at him with a feeble hand, trying to shove him off.

"If you're sure--"

"We're sure," she lied through gritted teeth, and swatted at Mulder's hand again. This time he seemed to get the hint, and removed his hand after one last squeeze.

Volney seemed mollified. "Okay. I'll be back in a few minutes." And with that, he departed.

Mulder was on his feet and gathering the files together almost before the sheriff was completely out of the room. "Run interference for me," he hissed.

"*What*?"

He thumped the edges of the files against the table once in an effort to straighten the pile. "I'm gonna make some copies. Keep an eye out for Volney."

She gaped at him. "Mulder, are you *crazy*?"

"Hey," he tossed back at her with that lopsided reynard grin, "that's crazy like a Fox."

He was across the hall before she could gain her feet.

"Shit," she whispered furiously, and made her way to the door. There was nobody in sight; she let her eyes flick from one end of the hallway to the other, like a woman trying to make a left-hand turn in heavy traffic. Her right hand itched for the weight of her weapon, a comfort that this level of adrenaline demanded despite the circumstances.

The copy machine was a noisy sonovabitch, and slow. It groaned and complained as though it were in labor, ignoring the interesting little rain dance that Mulder was doing in front of it. Five copies, now. Six. Seven.

Scully hated this kind of surveillance. She associated it with Kevlar vests and jumpy triggermen, hostage situations and bombs. There were none of the backhanded comforts of routine team surveillance, no cold French fries to share with Mulder or bizarre conversations to stave off the boredom. This was all edge.

A deputy wandered across the glass door at one end of the hallway, in and out of her vision in an instant, sending her heart rate into orbit.

"Hurry," she hissed. Mulder waved impatiently at her and continued his slow progress.

She could hear murmurs at the other end of the hallway, the one that ended in the break room. The wind-beaten door *thunk*ed rapidly a few times; there was the scrape of limestone on concrete and then the door slammed. The conversation seemed to grow louder; she couldn't make out any words, but one of the voices was definitely Volney's.

"Mulder," she growled in warning.

"Almost done," he whispered back. The copy machine groaned, as though in denial.

Volney's voice was louder now, and Scully heard footsteps. The hair on the back of her neck stood up.

"Mulder, will you MOVE YOUR ASS?"

Mulder came flying into the room at almost the same moment Volney appeared at the end of the hallway. Loud, measured footsteps ticked away like the second hand on a stopwatch. "Here," Mulder hissed, shoving half the copies into her hands.

"What the hell am I supposed to--?"

Mulder made a frustrated noise as he tossed the originals haphazardly onto the table. "Like this --!" He rucked up his suit coat and stuffed his handful of copies half-down the back of his pants, draping his jacket back over it. Scully imitated him, furious, moving at light speed, maneuvering around her holster.

She had barely put herself to rights when Volney appeared in the doorway, looming larger than life. There was so much adrenaline in the air, a person could get high just from breathing.

Volney crossed to the table and thumbed through the files. He looked up suspiciously at the agents from beneath bushy brows. "You folks done?"

Mulder smiled his best G-man smile. "Oh yes, sir," he said sweetly, "we have everything we need."


	12. Chapter 12

The Mo-Z Inn  
Room 122  
7:45 PM

"You call it. Heads or tails?"

"Heads."

"Oooh, tough luck."

"Damn!"

"Hah. Remember, Mulder, no sausage this time."

He reached for the phone and paused, one hand touching the receiver. "Green peppers?" he asked hopefully, giving his partner a forlorn look.

"Fine."

"Olives?"

Scully was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a melange of prim official files and the crumpled copies they'd pilfered from the sheriff's office. She glared at him over the rims of her glasses, unwilling to crane her neck just to make proper eye contact. "Don't push it, Mulder."

He shrugged philosophically and thumbed through the meager pages of the Tehtonka-Leotie-Parker City phone book, the phone receiver tucked into the crook of his neck. "There's only one pizza place in town."

"At least there *is* one."

"... Anchovies?"

She gave him a sharp look, saw laughter behind his eyes, and allowed herself a small smile. "I know I keep telling you to get more seafood in your diet, Mulder, but I don't think that's the way to do it."

He seemed satisfied, and sat down on the bed to dial. "Think the place is any good?"

She was barely listening, distracted for the moment by picking carpet fuzz off her slacks. "I'll be happy if it's still hot when it gets here."

"Oooh," he grinned. "I love a woman who's easy to please."

"Don't get used to it."

"I wouldn't dream of-- Hello, yes, I need to make an order for delivery. Mulder. Room one-twenty-two at the Mo-Z Inn. Large pepperoni, with mushroom, green peppers..."

"Extra cheese," Scully said without looking up. She smoothed out another crumpled copy and placed it on top of one of the manila folders from Taymor's, matching up the parallel sides. It seemed to hover, held aloft by the wrinkles ingrained in its surface.

"Extra cheese. Hey, Scully, thin crust or thick?"

"Thin."

"THIN," a squawky voice echoed from Scully's room; Scully leaned back and glared at the parrot through the open connecting door. Guido ducked his head slyly away from her gaze and fluffed his wings, muttering to himself in scratchy bird-talk.

"Thin crust. Uh-huh. One large iced tea, one large Diet Coke... Thirteen fifty-eight?" Mulder dug out his wallet one-handed and counted out a short stack of money onto the bedside table, eyed it critically and took back a few dollars. "Uh-huh. You too. Bye." He hung up and collapsed back onto the bed, bouncing slightly. From Scully's viewpoint, he vanished from the knees up. "Hey, Scully?" his disembodied voice asked.

"Yes, Mulder?"

"Wanna hear a funny story?"

"No, Mulder." She examined another copy, cast an eye around for the correct file to match it to, and placed it appropriately, square in the middle.

"Hmph." One orphaned foot scooted over to the other as though for company, slid up to scratch at the exposed sock, and came back down, toeing off first one shoe, then the other.

"Keep your shoes on," she warned.

The toes wiggled in their checkered socks, a This Little Piggy kickline. "Too casual for you?" Mulder's distant voice inquired.

"No," she said patiently, "your feet smell."

"Your shoes are off and *I* didn't complain."

"My feet," she informed him, "do not smell."

Mulder made a noise of amused effort and hitched his feet up onto the bed, reappearing from the waist up as he sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed. He snaked out a long arm and snagged his laptop computer from the bedside table, phone wires trailing after him like IV drips. "Wanna hear what I found on the internet?"

"Download those pictures on your own time, Mulder."

The corners of his eyes crinkled slightly. "Sorry to disappoint you, Scully, but this time I just looked up some information on succubi."

"OH PLEASE," Guido put in from the next room, and whistled.

"My sentiments exactly," Scully said dryly. She turned an abused copy right-side up and set it in place on a stack of others like it, puffed up to cartoonish height like the TV commercial version of a fifty-nine cent hamburger.

Mulder pressed onward. "The local Plains Indians have a variant on the myth that sounds like it might f--"

"Mulder," she interrupted, irritation spiking her like a tequila shot, "is this really necessary?"

Silence. She looked up, belatedly concerned, and caught the tail end of his hopeful smile as it slowly faded into something wary and watchful. The agents studied each other across the room for a moment, without words, the rickety balance between them tipping back and forth and trying to right itself.

For some reason he was being far too careful with her. She groped for the motive behind it, felt it slide away from her like a minnow, leaving behind an uneasy sense of dread. When Mulder was careful, it meant trouble; it meant his profiler's mind was at work, and although she had seen him make some spectacularly bad calls at profiling women, she couldn't be sure that this would be one of them. If he'd sniffed out the fantasies she'd been entertaining about him, the dream she'd had last night--

She willed away both the thought and the stab of fear that came with it.

Without thinking about it, she stood up and padded across the room, her pantyhose rasping oddly between the carpet and the ball of her foot, the crooked toe-seam twisting between two toes. She sat down on the edge of the bed, reached out and pulled the laptop toward her. "All right. Let me see."

The image on the screen was some kind of artist's rendering, not the Native American pictorial that Scully had expected. The female "demon" seemed as human-looking as the prone figure it pressed against, except that the victim was swathed in a blanket and the demon was nude, with obscenely large breasts. Without the blanket, it would have been a clipping from a pornographic comic book; as things were, it looked like a couple attempting a bizarre form of birth-control, with enough smoke billowing around to ensure that the casual observer would comprehend that this was a Supernatural Event.

She met Mulder's eyes and was relieved to find the wariness gone, submerged again in the electric current of his intense interest. An arachnid thought crept around the wall in her mind, murmuring hot words about what that high-voltage intensity would feel like focused on her. A shiver rippled across her skin and she had to grit her teeth to keep from arching her neck.

"Scully?"

"Are you going to tell me," she said in a remarkable facsimile of her normal voice, "or do I have to figure out what this is myself?"

Mulder made an amused noise deep in his throat and pulled the laptop to a position midway between them, brushing at the touchpad to scroll down past the cartoonish figures. "The local Okomhaka tribe has a myth about a spirit creature they call the Tochok. It's said to be a spirit being that attacks people in their sleep, just like the succubus or any of the others; the difference is that the Tochok actually kills its victims."

Scully gave him the eyebrow, right on cue.

He lifted his hands to proclaim his innocence. "I didn't just pull this out of my ass, I swear. It's right here."

She chuffed quietly but let him continue.

"The Okomhakas say that the Tochok invades a physical body-- a host, not a victim-- and sleeps inside it during the day, only coming out to hunt at night. The host, for the most part, is unaffected. The victims, however, are attacked while they are sleeping, pressed on to the point of suffocation, and then the Tochok drains them of their spirits."

"Drains?"

"Yeah. Here's the important part, Scully-- victims of the Tochok are said to have a big red mark seared into the skin of their abdomens. If we assume that 'draining them of their spirits' is a semi-religious misnomer for somehow liquidating all internal organs and sucking them out through the victims' mouths, then this looks a lot like a certain M.O. we've been seeing lately."

Scully stared at him. "First of all, Mulder, 'liquidating' is *not* an M.O., it's something you do to assets."

"Really?" His gaze dropped mischievously. "Your assets look pretty solid to me."

"Second," she continued, stone-faced, "the only way to liquefy human organs besides ordinary decomposition is to drop them into a blender and hit puree."

Mulder chuckled and reached over to manipulate the laptop touchpad. "Right here, Scully. The Okomhakas say that the Tochok would appear as the person that the victim desired the most. Perhaps that pressing on the abdomen is a close enough approximation of sexual contact to release some pent-up energy, sparking some kind of combustion that evaporates the organs and leaves the muscle tissue alone."

"Mulder," she growled, "that is the most ridic--"

"-- ridiculous theory, yeah, I know," he agreed, overlapping her words in an all-knowing way that made her want to punch him in the nose. "But look at it this way, Scully. All four of these victims were bona fide members of the Lonely Hearts Club, and all of them were hopelessly infatuated with Jim Taymor--"

"Except for Joshua Schmidt," Scully informed him dryly. "Unless you've decided his obvious stalking of the sheriff's daughter was just an act to cover his true preferences."

Mulder pointed his index finger at her like a gun. "Bingo. The others had it bad for Taymor, and Joshua had it bad for Amber. Every single one of them sexually frustrated."

She stared at him for a moment, looking for a way she could blow holes in his theory without having to use the word 'sexual.' There wasn't one. She sighed.

Guido was muttering to himself in the other room, sounding remarkably like a flu patient doing some preliminary gagging, and shuffled his feet noisily. He whistled suddenly; when the agents' attention turned to him, he preened, twisting his head from side to side. "PRETTY BIRDIE!"

Scully groaned.

Mulder chuckled, and took the chance to wind up his argument. "That would explain why there has been no evidence at any of the scenes, no trace evidence on the bodies, and why nobody's ever seen the murderer. A demon could coalesce inside the victim's bedroom and then disperse again the moment the deed was done, leaving no sign that it was ever there." He grinned. "And no eyewitnesses."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that."

"What? Who?"

She lifted her chin, a streetfighter daring an opponent to go for the knockout punch. "Fred Schmidt."

"Scuhllee," Mulder drawled, his eyes drooping lazily, "I thought you had that dismissed as a clear-cut case of sleep paralysis."

"I'm not saying it's not. It's entirely possible that Fred Schmidt caught a glimpse of the murderer and incorporated it into an episode of sleep paralysis." Her lips twitched involuntarily. "Granted, Fred Schmidt is not the most reliable witness in the history of crime, but that doesn't mean we should completely disregard his account of events."

"Fred's account of events is that he was attacked by a dark-haired, green-eyed demoness," he said pointedly, "which would back up my theory more than yours. Especially if we're right about Fred's unrequited lust for Marty Schmidt."

"Marty Schmidt," Scully ground out, "is not the only woman involved in this case with dark hair and green eyes."

He furrowed his brow at her. "Where are you going with this, Scu--"

"Amber Volney is dark-haired, green-eyed, and vehemently vocal in her dislike of the   
victims."

"She's a kid," Mulder glowered. "She's the *sheriff's* kid."

She shrugged neatly, crossed her legs and wiggled her toes inside the pantyhose. "The children of any authority figure are often prone to misbehaving, particularly during their teen years."

"Speaking from personal experience?"

"Not a lot of teacher's kids in my classes. Nuns are celibate."

He smiled automatically, but his attention was already laser-locked on another target. "Do you really think that a small-town teenage girl could do this, Scully?"

"We've seen worse," she reminded him.

"Right." He mulled it over, frowning. His right hand, apparently lacking explicit orders, began picking at an unraveled quilting thread on the nylon bedspread. Scully could barely hear the silky scritching sound, but it registered along her spinal cord, branching out in tiny silver tingles down her nerves.

She grabbed his hand, holding it prisoner six inches above the bed. He looked at her in honest surprise and the reality of his flesh hit her like a brick: the weight and mass of his big hand in hers, the heat, the rasp of dissimilar fingerprints along her own. His fingers squeezed hers reflexively and for a moment she forgot to breathe.

She let go with the exaggerated care of a woman on a tightrope, her hand swimming back into her personal space to land like a lunar module on her lap, her head buzzy with bloodrush. Mulder looked at her oddly and scratched at his neck with his newly released hand. "All right, convince me. Means, motive, opportunity."

"Fine." Scully removed her glasses, folded them neatly and set them on the bedside table. "Opportunity. Amber does not have a valid alibi for last Friday. She told her father she was going to a movie with her cousin. Her cousin, the nurse from the hospital --" She groped for the name and could not remember it. Her little notebook was propped up against her shoes, all the way across the room, unavailable. "She said that Amber was working late with her boss, Jim Taymor, and couldn't go to the movies. Jim Taymor said he was working late, alone."

"Teenagers lie to their fathers," Mulder shrugged. "She could have been anywhere."

"Motive. Amber is in love with Jim Taymor."

He looked at her blankly.

"She has a crush on him, Mulder. When I hinted that Marjorie could have been having an affair with him, Amber went through the roof. She's jealous, and taking out the competition-- or, in Joshua's case, removing an irritant."

He blinked. "Hold on, Amber said that Taymor wasn't having an affair with Marjorie, or with any of the others. If she's the murderer, wouldn't she go after his wife?"

"No," she sighed, "not necessarily. I'm not sure about how teenage boys operate, but for teenage girls..." She paused, trying to patch together a clean explanation without invoking personal experience. "When a teenage girl has a hopeless crush, she tends to see the girlfriend or wife of the crush as invulnerable. The legitimate significant other serves as a focus of jealousy, but there is a certain fear of retribution involved."

Mulder was eating this up. He looked like a preschooler at Story Time, listening wide-eyed to her story, his long legs folded in front of him in an awkward pretzel. "Fear of retribution from the girlfriend?"

She shook her head. "From the crush. Fear that the crush will hate her, or in some cases..." Her mouth grew dry for no good reason and she had to swallow before she could continue. "In some cases, a simple fear of exposing her feelings."

Mulder tilted his head, his curious gaze fixed on her. "So what you're saying is that the girl projects all her frustration on everyone else who is in the same boat?"

"Essentially, yes."

"Which is your whole reason for suspecting Amber Volney?" His tone was carefully neutral, but Scully's hackles rose nonetheless.

"I wouldn't say it's my *whole* reason, Mulder," she snapped. "Besides the fact that Amber Volney had daily contact with each of the victims and obviously bore all four of them ill will, I would venture to say that after years of investigative work I can spot a liar as well as you can."

He took a careful look at her, then shrugged and tilted over to one side, stretching his long legs out along the bed. "All right," he agreed mildly, and propped his head up on one big hand. "Answer me one question. You yourself haven't been able to figure out exactly how these people were killed. How good are the chances that an ordinary, small-town Midwestern high school student could come up with a mysterious binary poison that could baffle an FBI forensic pathologist?"

Scully went very still as she formulated her reply, her posture straight and her face expressionless. "Despite what I may accidentally have led you to believe, Mulder, forensic pathology is hardly a science that is set in stone. Human beings find new ways to kill each other almost every day, and there's a certain amount of catch-up time between the inception of those new methods and some pathologist discovering them and writing them up in the medical journals so that they become common knowledge. The chances that a small-town teenager could accidentally come up with a brand-new modus operandi are slim, I will grant you, but they are infinitely greater than the chances that a mysterious demon is stalking the local population of sexually frustrated citizens."

Mulder shrugged, a curious smile on his face. "Point taken."

"Thank you." She could still feel the aura of heat coming off of him where his weight made the mattress dip. Gravity tugged at her, urging her to tip over and tumble into him, and she closed her eyes briefly to consider defining this in Einsteinian physics, with Mulder as a white-hot star and herself a comet curving around his gravity well.

"I'll withdraw my assumption that she *couldn't* commit murder," he said at last, causing her to open her eyes and stare at the laptop. "I just don't think she could get away with it. No fingerprints, no forced entry, no trace evidence; either this kid is really lucky or she's hiding some serious brainpower."

"You said it yourself, Mulder," she informed him, letting her eyes focus on his reflection in the laptop screen. "She's the sheriff's daughter. It's possible that he may be protecting her."

He balked at that, his mouth pulling up on one side. "Oh, come on."

"It makes sense. He's the only one who has all the evidence in his possession. He's the only one who has been at all the crime scenes--" Mulder made a stubborn face; she pointed at a very rumpled set of copies with flaring self-righteousness. "He's the only one signed in at every one; you saw that yourself, he was the first man on the scene every time. He has kept information from his own deputies and attempted to keep it from us. For all we know, he may still be withholding evidence-- he may have even destroyed evidence."

"He's the sheriff, Scully."

"He's a *father*, Mulder." A memory flashed across her field of vision, embedded in reality like a subliminal message in an advertisement: her father, tall and terrible, threatening another man with his fists as little Dana stood, amazed, to one side. She had been five or six, playing uninvited in the neighbor's yard, and had taken the petals off of flower after flower to see how they were put together. The neighbor had caught her and chased her off his property with a hoe, only to encounter Big Bill Scully, home on leave.

"He's a father," she repeated, "and fathers will do anything to protect their daughters. Even if they're in the wrong."

"We don't have any proof on this."

"We haven't looked for any," she retorted. "We do, however, know that Volney is willing to act to protect his daughter; he already admitted that he threatened Joshua Schmidt."

"Waitaminit, you don't think Volney did this himself--"

"No, no, I don't believe he would have volunteered that information on Joshua if he had."

Mulder sighed deeply and rolled onto his back, hands tucked behind his head, staring at the ceiling. "Scully, I don't like this."

"I know," she said quietly, still not looking at him.

There was a moment of silence before Mulder spoke again. "Do you think there really is a leak?"

"I don't know, Mulder. It's possible. Perhaps *Volney* is the leak." She shrugged. "At any rate, it would give him the excuse he needed to keep all the information under lock and key."

"Mmm." He mulled it over; even without looking at him Scully could tell he was chewing on his bottom lip. "If he knows, or suspects, that Amber is the killer..."

"He probably didn't think the FBI would pay attention," she filled in. "It took three deaths, after all."

"Right," Mulder said in a voice drenched with irony. "I think there's another possibility, Scully. He could want to have her caught, just not by him, or anyone under his command. That way he could justify it to himself."

She half-looked at him, cutting her eyes around to the side without turning. "Agent Mulder, does this mean you believe my theory has merit?"

"Agent Scully," he rumbled, an arm tossed over his eyes, "I always do. In this case, though, I hope you'll forgive me for hoping you're dead wrong."

She smiled wryly, stealing this quiet moment while he couldn't see her, watching the rise and fall of his chest and gleaning a strange comfort from his respiratory process. A wordless, primal longing reared up in her like a sob; she wanted nothing more than to lie down next to him and wrap her arms around his chest and bury her face in that spot between his neck and his shoulder. She stared at that spot dizzily, breathing hard through her mouth.

White light flashed outside, illuminating the room like a movie set for half a second. Thunder grumbled along after it, forever late for the party; Scully's head snapped up guiltily at the sound.

A loud whistle of surprise from the next room shrilly echoed the thunder. "FUCK ME 'TIL I *FAINT*!"

Scully groaned.

Mulder started to chuckle, his arm still thrown over his face, his laughter shaking the bed. "Hey Scully, how 'bout we take Guido back to DC with us and keep him in the office?"

"I don't think it's a good idea," she told him, her eyes resolutely on the doorway despite the fact that she couldn't see the parrot from this angle.

"Why not?" He lifted his arm slightly to peer at her, grinning. "Against regulations?"

"Perhaps." There was a knock at the door, and she stood up to answer it, grateful for the excuse. "I think the more pertinent reason, however, is that by the end of the first week   
I'd shoot you both."

He was still chuckling at her as she scooped up the money from the table and answered the door.

The pizza boy was very young and very shy, and Scully felt for some reason that she was scaring him. She tipped him an extra dollar as a result, trying to assuage her illogical guilt, and shut the door very gently with her foot.

She turned around and discovered that the room was empty.

"Mulder?" Scully set the pizza down on the bed, snatching the unstable drinks off the box top and depositing them on the bedside table. She scanned the room, going very still and listening hard, her hand straying back to slide along the grip of her weapon. "Mulder? Where are you?"

"In here, Scully," a voice replied from the other room.

She peered through the connecting door into the dark room. "What are you doing in there?"

"Dinner entertainment," he said, and suddenly he filled the doorway, brandishing something huge and bullet-shaped, unrecognizable in the dim yellow light of the motel-wattage lamps. A bolt of lightning scorched through the sky outside, illuminating the scene so that Scully could see--

The parrot cage.

Guido hunched sulkily in the cage, the feathers along the back of his head puffed up, his beak open in a soundless complaint and his pointy little parrot-tongue showing. As Scully stared, nonplussed, Guido spread his wings slightly and made a hissing noise.

Scully folded her arms across her chest, giving bird and man her most ironic eyebrow. "This is the entertainment?"

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," Mulder announced, setting up the cage and stand in mid-room. "Since we can't make him shut up..."

"You're planning on teaching him to sing 'Jailhouse Rock'?"

He grinned. "Maybe tomorrow. Hey, Scully, did you know that the kea parrot of New Zealand will occasionally attack sheep and eat the fat surrounding the sheep's kidneys?"

"Is this your new theory of the modus operandi for this case, or have you been looking up useless information on the internet again?"

"I don't think it's useless," he protested. "It's good incentive for keeping this cage locked, for one thing."

She snorted and crossed back to the bed, opening the pizza box without ceremony and scooping out a droopy wedge. The cheese stretched, stringy dairy lifelines snapping one by one, the last few broken by a sweep of her finger. She scooted into the middle of the bed, maneuvering her pizza hand carefully to keep the orange grease in the cheesy crevices, well away from her clothing. The first bite was hot and gooey, cholesterol and fat and tomato sauce, everything tasty in the universe. She closed her eyes to chew, relaxing into the calorie respite the way some people relaxed into a bottle of Scotch.

The bed dipped under a mysterious weight and breath rasped nearby. Mulder. She kept her eyes closed, reading his actions from the movements of the bed and the sounds he made and a vague sixth sense that came from years of familiarity. At first he'd only had one knee on the bed, leaning in to grab some pizza; now he was arranging himself up against the headboard and pillows; now he was taking a drink; now he was eating, and looking at her.

His feet brushed her suddenly, came to rest along the outside of her thigh where she'd tucked her feet up in a modified lotus position. She sucked in hot oregano-scented air and opened her eyes to find him looking at her, just as she'd known he was. He crossed one ankle over the other and poked at her with his big toe. "Do you need to be alone with that?" he teased.

She gave him the eyebrow and took another bite. Mulder was eating like a kid, with great gusto and a happy smile. He was already halfway through his first slice and eyeing a second, pizza sauce smeared along his upper lip in a red clown's moustache. "Mulder," she said disapprovingly, shaking her head at the mess.

"MULDERRR," Guido echoed, mimicking her tone perfectly. His little black eyes glinted. "MULDER FBI!" he added, in a clear Mulder-voice. He stretched his neck to proudly display his profile. "PRETTY BIRDIE! CLEVER BIRDIE!"

Mulder pounded on his chest, wheezing with laughter. "We gotta keep this bird," he declared, gesturing at the cage with his pizza as though there were a vast number of birds in the room to choose from.

"After all the damage you've inflicted on your apartment, Mulder, I somehow doubt you'll be able to afford the additional pet deposit." Scully took another neat bite of pizza.

He prodded affectionately at her with his foot. It slid up farther this time, hitting her toes, sliding briefly along the length of her metatarsal bones and returning on the same path. A flash of heat slithered up her thigh, lightning-quick, and her body thrummed with silent thunder.

She pulled her foot away, tucking it beneath her tailor-style as casually as she could. The stodgy bite of chewed-up pizza sat on her tongue, unswallowed, unswallowable.

"Scully?"

She focused on him so abruptly she could feel her pupils constrict. Mulder had a mouthful of pizza and was giving her a very curious look. "Scully?" he said again, garbling it so that it came out as 'Scuhyee,' "y'okay?"

She shot him a frosty glare. "I'm fine," she told him in a tone that brooked no argument, despite being choked around a squishy ball of chewed-up pizza.

He watched her for a moment, shrugged, and turned his attention to the parrot cage. "Hey, Guido, how're you doing over there? You don't like pepperoni by any chance? No?" His tone changed, turned crafty. "Hey... Marrrjorie."

Scully choked down the bite of pizza. "What are you doing?"

"Conducting an interview," Mulder said, as though this were obvious. "Hey, Guido. Maaaarrrjorieeee."

"MARJORIE LOVES GUIDO. MARJORIE LOOOOOOVES GUIDO." Guido bounced smugly on his perch, head-banging to some silent music.

"Mulder, you can't be serious."

"Watch me." Mulder took another sip of his iced tea and, as though suddenly thinking of it, handed her the other drink. "Here."

She accepted it gingerly, like a HazMat vial. "Thanks."

His eyes brushed over her thoughtfully as he chewed on the crescent moon of crust. There was a question forming, brewing over his head like a storm cloud, and she glared at him over her Diet Coke until the cloud dissipated. He shrugged faintly and turned his attention back to the parrot. "Hey, Guido, here's another word for you. *Taymor*."

Guido perked up, stretching until he was several inches taller. "TAYMOR'S STAFFING SERVICE," he piped in a high, drawly voice. A chill ran down Scully's spine as she realized that she was hearing the workday greeting of a dead woman. "WE DO OUR BEST TO SERVE YOU BETTER. HOW MAY I HELP YOU?"

Mulder made his thinking noise, a low rumble in his chest like a cat's purr. She could practically see the wheels and gears in his head whirling like mad. "Hey, Guido," he said slowly. "*Jim*."

"JIIIIIIIIIIIM," Guido echoed, still in that same high drawl. "OHHHH, JIIIIIIIIIMMMM."

Scully blinked.

"OHHHHH. OOOOOOOOH. JIM, OHHHHH, JIM."

Mulder shifted awkwardly, scooting further up against the headboard. Scully sat very still, one hand stiffly holding the half-eaten piece of pizza out over the cardboard box.

They carefully avoided looking at each other.

"JIM. *JIM*, OH GOD, JIM..."

Mulder shifted around again, digging in with his heels to get better purchase on the slippery polyester bedspread. The gravity center of the bed shifted abruptly and Scully started to tip over; her pizza hand shot out for balance and for a bizarre roller-coaster moment she tried to catch herself and not drop the pizza and not spill the drink in her other hand and whatever happened make sure she didn't fall on Mulder.

She didn't spill the drink, but she dropped the pizza. Her hand came down directly on Mulder's leg, clamping on involuntarily.

"OH GOD, JIM-- OH YES, OH YES, YES, YES!"

Mulder jumped, startled; Scully stared at her hand, equally startled. She seemed to be frozen in position, resistant to her mind's frantic messages to leggorightnow, and when she tried to pull away by leaning back, her hand slid down Mulder's strong calf slowly, lingeringly.

"JIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMMMMMMM!!!!"

Scully managed to pull away. "Excuse me." She got her feet on the floor and made for her room step by torturous step, still clutching her unspilled Diet Coke in her left hand.

"Where're you going, Scully?"

"I'm going to bed," she snapped. "I'm tired and we're obviously not getting anything else done tonight."

"Don't you want any pizza?"

She caught sight of Mulder's puzzled face as she whirled to grab the doorknob. "I'm not hungry."

"But--"

"Goodnight."

She shut the door hard. There was a moment of silence.

In the other room, Guido began to chuckle knowingly.


	13. Chapter 13

The Mo-Z Inn, Room 122  
2:27 AM

The blast of thunder rattled the windows like a tambourine and slapped Mulder awake. He reflexively rolled out of bed, grabbing for his semiautomatic on the bedside table and crouching out of the line of fire before his foggy brain could remember how to distinguish between close-range gunfire and a Kansas thunderstorm. This, he concluded, was thunder. "God," he gargled; he hauled himself upright, knees popping, and staggered across the room to the window like a man wading through thigh-deep water.

He parted the curtains and peeked outside, yawning hugely and scratching at the prickly stubble on his jaw in a dulled version of a childhood reflex. An older cousin had once told him that yawning like that could dislocate his jaw, and for half his childhood he'd clutched his face whenever he had to yawn, terrified of the promised consequences. He yawned again, scrubbing at his eyes with a numb hand as the thunder rumbled threateningly.

Strangely enough, there was precious little rain to show for all the noise; the gravel parking lot was bone-dry. Mulder squinched up his eyes and peered up at the glowering clouds, trying to remember the warning signs for a tornado. Circular cloud movement, and green color. He couldn't remember if the green was the color of the clouds or whether a trick of the light would make everything *else* look green, but, happily, nothing was green. There was a hint of that yellow tinge that storms got right before the rain started-- the sort of daytime stormlight that made everything sepia-colored like an old photograph-- but mostly it was just dark, the thick clouds drooping with suppressed rain.

He gazed stupidly at the sky for what seemed like a very long time, inhaled another one of those huge jawbreaker yawns, and realized for the first time that what he'd grabbed off the bedside table was not, in fact, his gun. He was thinking loopy disconnected thoughts about how brain-dead tired he must be to not know his weapon by feel, not to mention taking so damn long to focus on the difference, when he finally looked down and noticed that the thing in his hand that wasn't his weapon was Scully's glasses.

It took a moment to sink in. He lurched across the room like a zombie and sat down at the end of the bed, where he stared at the glasses in his hand. It took his sleep-logged brain a long time to dredge up the reason that Scully's glasses were in his room; finally he remembered that she'd stormed out when he'd interviewed the parrot, leaving him to eat pizza and look at files all by himself. He puzzled over her actions for a moment, sighed, yawned, and admitted to himself that he wasn't getting anywhere.

It was hot in his room. He pulled at the neck of his t-shirt, trying to get comfortable, wondering what the hell the problem with Midwestern weather was. Last night he'd almost frozen his ass off, so tonight he'd cranked the thermostat up before going to bed, but of course now it was so damn humid from the gathering storm... He considered turning down the heat, but that would involve actually getting up and walking. Instead, he yanked his t-shirt off over his head and tossed it onto the sagging armchair next to the dresser. The air whooshed around him, feeling wonderfully cool on his sweat-misted skin. Ahhh, much better.

His bleary eyes slid shut-- oh, such a sticky-sweet, seductive feeling, just closing his eyes-- and he turned to the question he'd been working on before he'd gone to bed: if the murders had been committed by a native variant of succubus, who was playing host to the damn thing? He'd already ruled out the victims, since the Tochok didn't kill its host; that left... the living. Hell.

Try again.

From what he'd read, the victims and the host would have one major thing in common: sexual frustration. He'd seen it in the victims in this case; all that remained, really, was figuring out which of the sexually frustrated people in town was likely to be the host, and which were just in line to be the next victim. There ought to be some kind of outward sign, some kind of change in personality at least, but...

Which was the king, which were the pawns? Jim Taymor, Fred Schmidt, Amber Volney, the Sheriff, Jean Denison-- Aimee Marks? Marty Schmidt? Scully had mentioned something about one of the motel housekeeping staff acting strangely. He fumbled sleepily at the problem, but his mental dexterity seemed to have mittens on. He could get the pieces set up, but couldn't seem to manipulate them without knocking the whole chessboard over. He stared down at Scully's glasses, turning them over and over with numb hands, his mind going blank.

Thunder crackled from east to west like it was in Dolby Surround-Sound, and Mulder roused enough to find a dull bit of humor in sitting here in his t-shirt and boxers, slumped into a quotation mark. He blinked, but couldn't seem to get his eyes all the way open. He blinked again, slowly, and discovered that he could get *one* eye all the way open if he left the other one closed. Cool.

He leaned forward ponderously, swinging an arm up like an ape to poke the 'power' button on the television. Ooooh, the Sandie Shores marathon was still on. He made sure the volume was way, way down and sat back to watch.

Slowly the flickering image came into focus: two busty blonde women, wearing only high heels and silicone, writhing against each other in a bathtub. He thought he recognized the one on the bottom, although at the moment it was tough to tell; she wasn't in what you might call a recognizable position, and Mulder's drowsy eyes were having trouble focusing. The moans coming from the television were muted, soft as a kitten's breath, much gentler than the frantic action on the screen would warrant.

After a few minutes, Mulder became aware that the tiny moans were being echoed somewhere behind him. He turned around, his muscles reluctant as old rubber bands, and blinked at the parrot cage. Guido seemed half his normal size; he crouched on his perch in a dense feathery bundle, head low, and stared at the television with his eyes hooded and his beak half-open, echoing those tiny kittenish moans.

The parrot cocked his head to one side, focused a single beady eye on Mulder, and winked.

This time the thunder not only rattled the windows, it knocked out the power-- the television went off with a faint popping sound, plunging the room back into darkness.

Mulder groaned in defeat and collapsed backward onto the bed.

A quiet *snick* made him lurch upright again, blinking hard to make his eyes adjust, staring at the connecting door to Scully's room. As the darkness resolved itself into many shades of gray, the door opened.

She looked like a ghost, pale and noiseless, her features indistinct. Lightning flashed outside and she froze in the doorway, taut with indecision, one white hand still clutching the doorknob.

"Scully?" he asked, more for her benefit than for his.

Wide eyes turned toward him, glinting like a cat's.

"Let me guess," he teased softly, "you're scared of the thunder and you don't want to sleep alone."

Silence from the pale figure. "I didn't mean to wake you," she said at last.

"I was already awake." He squinted, trying to get a better look at her. "What's up?"

"I was, I wondered..." She stopped and folded her arms across her breasts. "I felt hungry," she said in a flat voice. "I thought maybe there might be some pizza left."

"Um..." Mulder shot a guilty glance at the empty pizza box jammed into the wastebasket. "Not really. Sorry."

"Hmm."

He couldn't quite make out her expression in   
the dark.

"I've got some change if you wanna hit the vending machine," he offered.

"I'm not going outside in the middle of the night, Mulder. Besides, isn't it raining?"

"Thunder and lightning, no rain." He shrugged. "Welcome to the Midwest."

She didn't reply, probably didn't even hear him from whatever Scullyworld she was swimming in. He saw the dark shape of her head turn back toward her room. "I'd better go back to bed," she said, very matter-of-factly.

"All right." He abruptly remembered what he was holding in his hand. "Hey, Scully." She turned back. "Here." He offered her her glasses, out at the end of his long arm. "You forgot these earlier."

She hesitated for a long moment, then took one step towards him. Another. Her hand reached out and wrapped around the glasses, one cool finger straying over his thumbnail like an unconscious caress. "Thanks," she whispered.

The television snapped back to life, drenching the two of them in swift blue light. Scully's eyes went wide with shock, her eyes locked on some spot below his chin, her lips parted slightly. The moans from the television and from the parrot started up again in erotic counterpoint, but to his surprise Mulder could hear Scully's harsh gasp over all of it.

Her eyes wrenched up and met his for a single stark moment and Mulder saw anguish there-- anguish, and a desperate hunger held in check by some terrible force of will.

It suddenly became very clear to him that Scully did not have the flu.

Thunder crashed all around them.

She blinked, and her composure snapped into place like a glazed pane of glass, obscuring his sense of her. "Thank you," she said again, more formally, and pulled her glasses-- and her hand-- away from him.

"Are you okay?" he asked stupidly. It wasn't the question he wanted to ask.

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

She shot him a flame-thrower's glare from beneath her brows; a night-darkened arc of hair curved perfectly down the middle of her face, teaseing her nose and shimmering red around the edges. She did not answer.

His hand still hung in the air like a pendulum   
in arrested movement, the waiting and   
expectancy pervading the six feet between the two agents.

She looked at him for a long time. He looked back.

"I'll see you in the morning, Mulder," she told him, and walked out.

 

It was twilight in the jungle.

The air was dense with steam and with the smell of growing things, rotting things, things that prowled and hunted and whose eyes gleamed yellow in the shadows. Scully could feel the humidity wrapping around her body like a wet trenchcoat. Condensation fogged the windows of the rented car, obscuring the glass; as she watched, Mulder wiped it clear, and the moisture beaded and ran down the window in thin quicksilver rivulets where his hand came away.

He looked outside through the clear patch, relaxed and focused as he always was on stakeout, sprawled over the bucket seat and slumped a little so that his knees almost bumped against the dashboard. One hand tapped on the steering wheel in slow motion, like a drumbeat, a heartbeat.

Mulder watched the outside. Scully watched Mulder.

She coiled herself on the passenger seat like a whip, taking in his every movement with hooded eyes. Shadow painted her hands with cool stripes in the heat. She could feel a bead of sweat trembling on the upper edge of her lip, tiny and bulging against gravity; she lapped at it with a swift curl of her tongue, her eyes never leaving Mulder.

His shirt was off and he was glossy with sweat, the twilight gleaming along the planes of his body, shimmery dark like onyx where the half-light could not reach. The short hairs on the back of his neck were dark with sweat, sticking to his skin and melting together into a hundred soft wet paintbrushes; the hair on his chest plastered against him, shallow furrows directing the sweat to the dark central line like tiny tributaries bleeding into a river.

Scully sat still and calm and let her eyes devour that bare chest, sat still while the caged animal paced behind her eyes and hurled itself against the bars, howling with need. Her hands curled into claws, nails sharp against her palms. The ache to touch him cut straight to the bone, gripped at her stomach, thinned her breath to a panther's shallow pant.

The tropical insects hissed their chorus outside the car, thousands of individual songs blending into an undulating backdrop of sound as pervasive as the humidity. A loud cracking sound resounded somewhere to the West, dragging across the distance as though the hammer of some unbelievably large pistol was being cocked unbelievably slowly.

Sweat gathered at the hinge of Mulder's jaw, slid down the long vertical ridge of muscle, caught and pooled in the hollow of his throat. His carotid artery pulsed steadily under his skin, making the little pool of sweat tremble like water in a worn stone when the earth shook, building up on the edge of his supersternal notch micrometer by agonizing micrometer.

Beat.

Beat.

Beat.

The weight of the third dimension became too much and the pool welled over the cusp, a flat stream trickling into his chest hair. Scully exhaled sharply and the world went heavy and dim.

She had her mouth on him before her next breath.

Her tongue lapped up the tiny river fleeing downward, licked the salt from his body in long swipes. He made a surprised groan low in his throat, and she felt it rumble under her hand as she palmed his chest, his hot hair curling around her fingers as she bared her teeth against him in a triumphant smile. He smelled like summer shadows, dark and warm and spicy. She breathed him in through her mouth, tasting his scent, and placed a lingering openmouthed kiss over his left nipple.

His chest heaved; air whuffed out through his nose and ruffled her hair. She treated the right nipple to a matching kiss and trailed her tongue downwards, drinking from his skin as she followed the coarse dark line down his stomach. His abdominal muscles jerked away from her in surprise as he exhaled sharply, and her tongue stretched out to follow, the tip barely grazing him, tracing delicate lines around his navel. He gasped and started to pant, harsh humming noises echoing far over her head. She nipped at his stomach right above the waistband of his jeans and his legs jerked involuntarily, one knee striking the dashboard with a dull thud.

The hot denim was already damp from his sweat when she slid her hand up to stroke him through his jeans, rubbing her palm slowly up and down the hard straining length of his cock as she nuzzled at his stomach. He made a desperate sound, a swallowed agonized sob, and his hand slapped down on the control console on the door armrest, bracing against it as his entire body tensed.

The automatic door locks slammed down and up and down again as he arched up into her touch.

She slipped down a little further, burying her nose in the concave side of the denim tent stretching over his cock, drowning in the musky heat rolling off his body. He was white-hot even in the sweltering holocaust of the car, his thick moan loud against the backdrop of jungle noises when she traced the zipper of his jeans with her nose. She opened her mouth slowly, so slowly, gripped his cock lightly between her teeth and dragged down his length, the friction from the cloth burning her lips as though she were striking a match.

He made a strangled noise and bucked shallowly, trembling with the effort of restraint.

A button unbuttoned, a zipper unzipped. She dipped her hand inside and between humid layers of clothing, curved her fingers around his cock through the thin layer of cotton and gave him a slow stroke before finally drawing him out into the open. Her hand curled around his circumference and his hips pumped up into her fist, just once; she could feel the slight give of the tight silky skin as he moved.

She stroked her hand down to the base of his cock, dipped her head, and licked him once, roughly, flat-tongued like a jungle cat. He ground out a harsh moan as she did it again, a long sandpaper taste rasping over the length of her tongue. Smoky, salty, coppery as blood.

She growled and gave him a third harsh lick.

This time she slid down and swallowed him whole.

She devoured him with long sucking strokes, feeling his pulse on her tongue. Hips thrusting against her, he groaned broken words in a broken voice, choking out a gravelly baritone aria that sounded more and more like an animal cry as she brought him closer to the edge.

She growled in the back of her throat. He seemed to struggle against her as though he were trapped, cornered, losing control of his movements--

Stroke

Stroke

Stroke

"SCULLY--!"

&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;

"SCULLY!"

Scully hurled herself into a sitting position, ripped out of sleep by Mulder's voice, and stared into the muggy dark with painfully open eyes, gasping for air, heart thudding as though she'd just run a marathon. Oh God. Oh God.

Jungle insects hissed their furious white-noise song like a Wagnerian pit orchestra. The darkness was too thick to breathe. She felt charged, electrified, every hair on her head standing at attention and the lighter hair on her arms fuzzy with static.

Where the hell *was* she?

The sound of a fist pounding on a door, almost in perfect time with her racing heart. "SCULLY??"

She stared down at her body, eyes slowly adjusting to the dark. Bed. She was in a motel bed. Her pajamas were clinging to her, soaked with sweat. The rough cotton sheets were twisted around her like pythons and the slippery comforter had puddled off the side of the bed, one corner still hanging onto the mattress like a rock climber clinging one-handed to a cliff. The Wagnerian symphony outside wasn't insects, it was a deluge; rainy season had come to Tehtonka.

A dream. It had only been a dream.

A dream.

Something inside her stretched and ached unbearably at the thought. She buried her face in her hands, humiliatingly close to tears; her sinuses closed up and two big invisible hands clamped around her skull to compress her temples. "God DAMMIT," she yelled hoarsely, voice muffled by her palms and the anguish that had her by the throat.

Only a dream.

"SCULLY??" Mulder kept banging away at the door. Damn the man. Oh, damn him.

She forced herself to uncurl from her fetal position and swiped an angry hand across her eyes as she yanked the sheet off, despite its death grip on her leg, and climbed out of bed. She stumbled to her feet and grasped blindly for her robe, swallowing hard through the rocks in her throat. It was like a damn sauna in this room but she couldn't conceive of opening the door for Mulder without the robe on. It wasn't armor, but it was the most she could do on short notice.

Thunder rumbled outside, a huge leisurely building-shaking rumble that sounded like a boulder crashing down a flight of stairs. A wave of giddiness almost knocked Scully to her knees; she sat back down on the bed unceremoniously, her hands twisting the ties of her robe like tourniquets.

"SCU--"

"ALL RIGHT," she yelled, eyes shut tight, the added vocal strain almost strangling her, "I'm awake, Mulder, will you SHUT UP ALREADY?"

The abrupt silence from his side of the door would have been hysterically funny under other circumstances. She could easily imagine the popeyed look on his face, his mouth caught open, the heel of his palm arrested mere inches from hitting wood.

"Hang on a minute," she added as she tested her balance and stood again, the pressure of imminent tears turning her voice into a low, throaty Marlene Dietrich growl. Very sexy. How ironic.

She got herself moving with the old trick of suppressing her knowledge of cause and effect-- her mind was completely wrapped up in the goal of the door, unlocking the door, opening the door, but she refused to think about what would come through the newly-opened door. If she thought about facing Mulder with her face flushed red and her hair standing up, smelling of sweat and dream-induced arousal--

She ignored it. She walked.

The shakes hit her halfway across the floor, limbs trembling uncontrollably, feet placed unsteadily in a random forward path; lo, behold the revenge of a sleep-deprived body for a bare twenty or thirty minutes of sleep after pacing the floor for hours and hours. She fumbled the lock open with ravaged hands and tugged at the doorknob.

The door wouldn't open.

Relief hit like a tsunami, and she sagged against the door in its wake. Oh thank God, she didn't have to look at him. She didn't have to let him see her like this. Her mindless litany of thanksgiving was the closest to real prayer that she'd come in weeks: thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God. She lay her forearm against the blood-warm wood and pressed her forehead to it.

The knob turned by itself beneath her palm in a stealthy caress, whispering with soft metallic friction as the latch slid all the way open. There was a long pause, and then the knob turned back; somehow she knew, even after the movement ceased, that Mulder's hand was still on the knob on the opposite side. "Scully, are you all right?" he asked in a low voice.

"The door's stuck," she admitted, torn between absurd pride and equally absurd guilt. The condition of the door was most likely due to the fact that some mental giant had carefully painted both the door and the frame with semi-gloss paint that had, under these conditions of high humidity, miraculously transformed into carpenter's glue. Any efforts of her own, Herculean as they seemed inside her own head, were in fact unimportant and unworthy of the self-congratulatory cartwheels she wanted to turn.

"Did you unlock it?" Mulder asked, sounding skeptical.

"Of course." Her voice came out high-pitched and bitchy instead of the ringing authoritative tone she'd meant to access. Damn. She flushed with anger or humiliation -- at this point, it was impossible to distinguish between them.

"Hang on." A meaty thunk jarred the door under Scully's hand, unmistakably Mulder ramming against it with his shoulder. He tried again. The door was unimpressed with the macho man routine and remained epoxied in place.

She stepped in before he battered himself senseless against the stubborn wood. "Mulder, don't. If it's jammed this badly, you'll just damage the door frame." Silence from the other side, tacit agreement. "Just... just talk to me through the door."

He made an amused noise that was stripped of its overtones by the inch of wood between them. "All right. Did the Kansas City lab ever get back to you?"

"Halfway," she replied, the strain of speaking through a door starting to rub her voice raw. "Dr. Jane Marek called and said that the residue found in and on Joshua Schmidt's mouth was definitely the result of some kind of visceral pyrexia. They found cell samples of every internal organ, as well as some muscular tissue. Dr. Marek, and I quote, wanted to know if someone had tried to make a funky margarita out of the kid, unquote."

"Sounds like my kind of woman."

"She's married," Scully snapped, a little harsher than she meant to.

"Touchy. Any news on the blood work?"

"Heightened hormonal levels consistent with a state of sexual arousal at the time of death. They found extremely low levels of a foreign organic substance that could not be identified, which may possibly be the mystery toxin we've been looking for. They're running more tests today to determine if the foreign substance reacted with the hormones to induce the visceral pyrexia."

There was a long silence as Mulder digested that one. The rain hammered down outside, a steady straight downpour that sounded like a giant bathtub faucet had been turned on over Tehtonka. Scully rested her ear against the door and closed her eyes, listening for him.

She heard his touch whisper over the painted wood and, hypnotized, she lifted her hand to echo his movement. Quiet, slow. She let her fingers trail down the warm door, remembering the dream-feel of his chest, and unconsciously turned her face to nuzzle the hard surface.

"Scully?" His voice was almost a purr.

"Mm-hmm?"

"... What're you wearing?"

She jerked away from the door. "Dammit, Mulder--"

His voice shifted into that misunderstood puppy dog whine. "No, seriously, are you dressed yet?"

"Mulder, you woke me up. I'm in my robe and pajamas."

"Get dressed."

She glared at the door as though she could bore holes through it with her gaze and take him to pieces, atom by atom. "Why?"

"Just a little something they taught me at Quantico. Always get dressed before going on stakeout."

"We're going on stakeout?" Her voice was expressionless as her mind made the short leap back to the dream stakeout in the jungle, Mulder shirtless and moaning under her touch.

"Right."

"Whom, exactly, are we staking out?"

"You get three guesses," he told her slyly. When Mulder used the same tone of voice to describe a stakeout that he usually reserved for enthusing about an upcoming Knicks game, Scully counted it as a sign of danger.

"It's too early for this game, Mulder."

"I'll give you a hint. The Tochok uses a sexually frustrated being as its host, and spots its victims during the course of the host's daily life. So we're looking for someone who's been in contact with every one of these victims when they were near the object of their unrequited passion; probably someone at Taymor's Staffing Service."

Even in this questionable mental state, she arrived at the conclusion before he'd finished. "Amber Volney."

"Ooh, Scully, got it on the first try. You get a gold star."

"Suffice it to say, Mulder, I don't think she's possessed by a demonic entity."

"I didn't expect you to, but at least we agree on the suspect."

She considered it. "And you want us to go stake her out?"

"Yes."

"Right now."

"Yes."

"Mulder, do you know what time it is?"

"Um..." His presence disappeared briefly from the other side of the door, only to return a moment later; Scully sensed his approach the same way animals feel impending earthquakes. "It's six-oh-eight."

She gave her alarm clock an outraged glare, long-distance across the room, as though it had somehow conspired against her. She hadn't planned on getting up until six-thirty. Twenty precious minutes lost. "What exactly did you plan on accomplishing that couldn't have waited until breakfast?"

"I'm not sure whether she's going to school or going to Taymor's today. I thought if we tailed her from home instead of looking for her later, we might save a little time."

"Right *now*?"

Silence. She pressed her ear into the door and listened to her own heartbeat, reflected back seashell-style. There was a flash of lightning, the thunder spitting out in several distinct beats, a stately timpani solo. The darkness was no longer absolute; dawn was crawling over the plains like a wet cat, skinny and pissed off and slinking along on its belly.

Mulder's answer, when it came, was unrelated to the question.

"Did you get back to sleep all right?"

"Yes." The lie was heavy on her tongue and tasted like bronze.

Mulder's answering silence was accusatory. The short hairs at her nape jerked upward as though an ice-cold hand had slipped up the back of her neck -- something was wrong. Something was very wrong. This was not the fragile treatment of last night, this was something new, a question on the brink of being asked.

He knew.

No.

He might know, he might not; he definitely suspected.

Whether or not he investigated his suspicions would depend upon what he thought he'd find. What he wanted to find. This might sound like small talk, but there were razor blades embedded in every inch of it.

"Are you going to be up to this?" he asked, using the same tone that usually heralded unexpected autopsies.

"I'll be fine." This lie was smooth and cold as iced milk; it went down easier than the first but it coated her throat on the way down.

"Scully..." He stopped, and she heard his touch whisper along the surface of the door again. "Can I come around the front?"

"No." She shook and shook her head like a child, so internalized that she'd forgotten he couldn't see her. "No, you can't," she elaborated, each word like a brick. Her heart was pounding, the pulse hard and painful in her throat. She gathered more hard words in a mental hand, hefting them, waiting for him to make a move so she could hurl them at him, drive him away before he could attack.

Silence. The rain hissed down. A truck with a muffler problem drove by, crashed through puddles along the road one by one and rattled off, humming like a giant drunken bumblebee. Scully had a strange vision of herself and Mulder crouching on either side of the door, armed, safeties off, each waiting for the other to kick through the door.

Mulder cleared his throat, seeming to sense the stalemate. His tone changed. "I mean, can I bring the parrot around."

It wasn't what he'd meant originally, Scully knew; but she was willing to go along with it. "Let me get dressed and you can bring him in here before we leave."

Thunder rolled across the sky, strangely distant compared to the too-present rain. Mulder's smile was practically visible through the door. "Admit it, you have a soft spot for that bird."

"If you believe that, Mulder, you have a soft spot in your head."


	14. Chapter 14

Drees Street and Main  
7:18 AM

The tiny red Honda barreled along the road with little heed to the pounding rain or the twenty mile per hour speed limit. Three blocks behind the Honda, a rented Crown Victoria struggled to keep up, the tar lines in the blacktop throbbing beneath its tires like a staccato cello solo.

Mulder was not happy about driving this fast. He was normally ambivalent about bending the law when shadowing a suspect, but the rain-slick blacktop was hard to maneuver on. He found himself wanting to drive like a blue-haired old lady, which made him jumpy and irritated with himself, but the fact remained that while the sheriff's daughter might speed with impunity, a pair of FBI agents tailing the sheriff's daughter ought to be just a little bit more cautious.

He didn't want to think about Volney's reaction if he found out about this little excursion.

The windshield wipers were thwipping back and forth at a frantic pace, clearing the rain for a microsecond before the constant flow of water obscured Mulder's vision again. He hunched over the steering wheel, practically driving with his knees and elbows, squinting out at the smeary red tail lights of the tiny assortment of cars engaged in the sport of controlled hydroplaning. Water hissed steadily beneath the Crown Vic and swished out from under the wheels of approaching cars, changing pitch as the cars whizzed past.

Scully leaned forward and turned up the heat a notch. The inside of the windshield began to fog up; Mulder squeegeed it angrily with the flat of his hand. "Cut it out, Scully, I can't see."

"I'm cold," she bit out.

Mulder squeaked a hand across the windshield again, leaving a six-inch-wide   
swath clear in the middle of the fog, and grabbed recklessly at the heat   
control. "It's not that cold," he informed her, and snapped the heat off.

She glowered and turned away from him, ostensibly to look out the rain-marbled window. "Fine."

The Honda's tail lights flared like a trumpet call and Mulder had to do some talented braking action to avoid drawing attention, avoid hydroplaning, and avoid cramming the Crown Victoria up the Honda's tailpipe. He hadn't recognized Taymor's Staffing Service under the gray drape of rain; somehow he'd thought it was somewhere a few blocks further on.

The Honda shot into a parking spot directly in front of Taymor's. As the Crown Vic passed it, Scully whipped her head around counterclockwise to peer out the back window when she could no longer keep in visual contact through the passenger side. "Turn here!" she barked. "Here! *Now!*"

"I *am,*" he snapped back, craning his neck around to check for oncoming traffic. The car plowed through a deep puddle with a low-pitched splash that slapped against the underside of the car. There was a parking lot in this block, right across the road from Taymor's, but he couldn't see a way in from this street. There were too many damned bushes in the way.

Scully twisted in her seat, still keeping an eye on the red Honda. "In here," she ordered, and pointed authoritatively at the parking lot without looking at it.

"Hang on a minute."

"Mulder, will you PARK THE CAR already?"

"I AM," he howled, and hit the gas. He wrenched the car to the left and through a one-car-wide inlet to the parking lot that he'd spotted barely in time, jouncing them severely as the wheels struck a faded orange concrete traffic bump far too fast.

It was nowhere near appropriate behavior for a stakeout, but Mulder didn't give a damn.

The parking lot was nearly empty. Mulder ignored the chipped lines of paint on the concrete and plowed across the parking lot, braking hard and throwing the Crown Vic into park in a spot parallel to Main Street, the driver's side facing east, toward Taymor's. He cut the engine and looked across the street just in time to see Amber Volney slam her car door and run across the wide sidewalk without a coat, umbrella or even a newspaper held over her head against the pouring rain, the perfect picture of the indifference of youth to cold and wet and mother's orders. She splashed through a puddle, darted under the wide green awning that covered the entire front of the store, yanked open the wide glass door and slipped inside.

Moments later, Amber appeared in the display window, tossing her dark hair to free it of water, throwing her blue backpack into the chair behind the receptionist's desk. She stopped, fluffed her hair a little with one hand, and then walked off toward the back, disappearing from sight.

Rain slammed down on the car in sheets, blowing in from the West, obscuring every window except the one facing Taymor's.

"Do you think she saw us?" he asked, more to have something to say than because he actually thought they'd been burned half an hour into the stakeout. He kept his eyes on the lighted windows of Taymor's Staffing Service.

"No." Scully's voice was very quiet, barely audible over the drumming of the rain.

Across the street, Amber Volney reappeared in the display window. She sat down at the receptionist's desk, propped her feet up and began flipping through a stack of files in a haphazard manner. Occasionally she tossed one onto the desk.

"Looks like she's in for the day," Mulder said.

Scully didn't answer.

"I said, it looks like she's in for the day."

"I heard you the first time," she snapped.

He turned away from the lighted windows of Taymor's and looked at his partner in the pinched gray stormlight. She had her arms wrapped tightly around herself, and her face might as well have been carved from stone, her eyes fixed straight ahead. It wasn't exactly her angry expression, but he didn't know what else to call it.

"If you're tired," he offered, "you can go ahead and take a nap."

She angled her face in his direction but still didn't exactly look at him. "I don't want a nap."

"I'm just saying that I know I woke you up and we couldn't get any coffee and it would be understandable if you needed to take a quick--"

"Mulder, I don't need a nap." She turned all the way away from him, her shoulders tight under her trench coat.

"Okay. Okay."

He sighed and turned back to Taymor's. Amber was fiddling with the antenna on a little radio, frowning at it; she played with the dials, apparently did not get what she wanted, and gave the radio a hard thwack with her palm. This seemed to satisfy her. She settled back into her chair and began to belt out a lip-synch solo, pointing sexily at someone invisible during relevant musical phrases.

A pickup truck bumbled past, splashing through various puddles, playing loud country music that made the panels of the Crown Vic vibrate. The mobile concert faded out in the distance and all that was left was the cold rattle of the rain and Amber Volney's mute concert across the street.

Mulder sighed again, took off his seat belt, and shifted around until he was in a somewhat comfortable position.

"Hey, Scully," he tried, "I could sneak out to the gas station across the street and grab us some coffee."

"I don't want any coffee."

"It would help wake you up. Wake us up," he amended quickly.

"Mulder," she said in a patient voice edged with scorn, turning slightly toward him, "it may be a while since you've done this kind of surveillance, but we're not going to have many bathroom breaks in our future and caffeine is a diuretic."

"I could get decaf."

"I'm not even going to go into the logic of that statement," she snapped, and turned away again.

 

10:52 A.M.

Scully saw the man coming before Mulder did. More accurately, she saw a dark rain-streaked blur crossing the lighter rain-streaked blur that she had identified as Lind Street, and made an educated guess. "Down!" she hissed, and slid lower in her seat.

Mulder didn't even turn to double-check what she was talking about; he hunched down in his seat awkwardly, his knee smacking the dashboard as he doubled up. The noise tore through Scully's mind like a bullet--

 

She swallowed a whimper and rested her head against the seat back with a cushiony thump.

The man-shaped blur scurried past the driver's side of the Crown Vic and slowly came into focus from the shoulders up: short, bald, brown suit, goggle-eyed like a frog. He held a blue plastic tub above his head in both hands like an offering to a whimsical ancient god. There was a furiously twisting level of dark blue evident along the side of the tub, evidence that the man had been out in the rain long enough to collect a lot of water.

The man sped past the parking lot without glancing at the car, much less the federal agents crammed into it like the bottom half of a circus clown act.

"I don't think he saw us," Mulder announced as he wormed his way upright again. He started peering out the only clear window as though an entire platoon of bald men with plastic tubs was about to come charging their way.

Her eyes were drawn to his face the moment his attention was elsewhere, like some kind of science experiment from second grade involving magnets and iron filings. He hadn't shaved this morning, perhaps because he was in such a determined hurry to get on the road and start keeping an eye on Amber Volney. She couldn't remember the last time he'd done that.

She couldn't remember how she'd lived through the last time.

"You know, Scully," Mulder observed, absently drawing little curlicues on the fogged edges of his window, "the real difference about the Midwest isn't so much the people as it is the *cars*. In the city it's such a hassle to find parking that once you park one place, you might as well keep the space for the day and just hoof it around the immediate area, rain or shine. Out here, you can leave the umbrella behind and just drive the two blocks to your next destination. The Midwest is rich in parking spaces."

She stared helplessly at the dark texture of his face and wished he'd shut the hell up. The ache of wanting him was starting to grind at her bones like a high fever; it made her restless. More than anything else she wanted to run her palm along his jaw and feel that stubble with her hand and her lips.

"Then again," he continued thoughtfully, "it might just be the cheaper gasoline."

She didn't answer. Her mind was caught up in flesh fantasies of sandpaper stubble scraping against the inside of her thighs, of threading her fingers through his soft dark hair to direct him and urge him on--

 

"You okay, Scully?"

She broke herself out of the vision to find Mulder facing her, studying her face with a faint frown etched between his eyebrows. A sudden cramp in her neck brought reality front and center, and she realized that she was still slouched down below eye level, still in hiding.

"Fine." The word didn't seem to mean anything anymore but she said it nonetheless, struggling upward to sit stiffly in her seat. His eyes were still on her; she could feel him examining her as though his huge rough hands were running along her limbs to check for broken bones.

She turned and looked him full in the face and suddenly felt as if she'd been blindsided by a wall of cold water. And she was drowning--

 

His eyes caught and held her for an endless moment, his face set in that eternal Mulder expression of puzzlement and mulish determination but his eyes, his eyes were lit with a spark of surprised awareness that burned to the bone. Dizziness washed over her, a swirling giddy half-drunken sensation that she recognized from childhood, when she'd spun herself around and around like a top and thrown her head back to watch the pebbled ceiling magically turn into a universe of concentric circles.

At age six, that sensation had been her favorite, better than swimming on a hot day, better than jumping into a crackling pile of leaves.

As an adult, it terrified her.

It was like standing in the doorway of an airplane at cruising altitude, with a parachute strapped to your back and the cold air sucking at you, standing and contemplating the incoherently huge distance to the ground while dumb animal fear warred with impetuous human desire and you know that at any moment desire would win and you'd hurl yourself out the door.

She could feel her attraction to Mulder pulling at her like some insanely strong gravitational force. The door of the airplane was open, all right, and she was standing there with the wind whipping at her, staring down at the curve of the earth's surface, but the difference here was that she had no damned parachute, none at all. The desire to jump remained, and that scared her worse than the concept of falling: the panicky surety that she might do something without her mind's permission, that if she let down her guard for the slightest moment, something--

 

\-- might happen, something irrevocable.

She ripped her eyes away from him and turned away, feeling profound relief that she retained *that* much control over herself.

And then she yawned.

It was an absurd, huge, undignified yawn, and it scared her half to death. How could she keep watch over this starved animal hunger if she was too tired to concentrate?

"If you want to take a nap--" Mulder began.

"I don't want to take a nap."

His gaze sunburned her neck for another moment and then she felt it shift away.

When she felt sure of herself again, she chanced a swift look at him out of the corner of her eyes. He was staring out into the rain, mulling something over in the deep cavern of his mind. Something about his face made a tiny worm of unease twist deep in her gut -- something in the set of his jaw, maybe, or the way the rain rolling over the windshield threw moving shadows across his face.

She looked down at her hands, clenched together in her lap, and tried not to wonder what the hell he was thinking about.

 

12:26 PM

Mulder had entertained vague hopes that staking out Amber Volney would be more interesting than the usual kind of stakeout, but after more than five hours of watching the little brat do office chores, he was starting to wonder just what the hell he'd been thinking. Had he really expected some kind of smoking gun? All he'd gained from the experience, thus far, was a low opinion of Amber's clerical skills and a fairly numb ass.

Not to mention an earful of chilly silence from Scully. The weird tension shivering between them, the one that Mulder didn't care to put a name to, had been cranking up and up all morning, like a violin string tightened beyond the point of vibration or resonance, tightened to the point where there wasn't much else it could do besides snap.

He knew, on a visceral level, what was going on, but he didn't want to think about it. His waking mind had chosen to studiously keep away from examining anyone's motives this morning, particularly Scully's.

Or his own.

In the field, Mulder operated on instinct a good ninety percent of the time, and he was in the field right now. There was a knot of dread in his stomach, about two fingerwidths down from the southern end of his sternum, making him restless; he felt like an elementary-school kid who couldn't sit still, the kind of kid who went charging around and around at recess instead of playing kickball. Looking at Scully intensified the feeling; he watched her select a juice box from the little cooler at her feet and strip the thin plastic off the bendy straw with a surgeon's dexterity.

Ignoring him. Shutting him out.

There was a strange urge building up in him, a nervous, twitchy need to draw her into conversation, stir her up, irritate her. Very similar to the need he'd had at age eight to push girls down on the playground.

"I have a problem with your theory," he told her.

Her eyes went wide and she stared at the windshield, and it occurred to him that she'd been doing that on and off for hours now, usually at the points in conversation when, normally, she'd turn to look at him. A sick feeling of recognition began glowing around the edges of his thoughts, but he ignored it.

She was silent and still as a rabbit hiding from a predator.

"According to your theory," he pushed on, "the murderer administered half of the binary poison and the other half was purely in the victims' hands. If you'll excuse the expression."

She made a face, flinching away from him.

"So tell me, Scully: if, as you've theorized, the murderer was not present for the murders, why weren't the liquefied guts still sloshing around in the victims when their bodies were discovered?"

There was a long moment of rain-pattered silence.

"Stomach pump," Scully said at last in a strained, throaty voice that he barely recognized. "The murderer removed the viscera with... with a stomach pump."

"I don't think so," he informed her, feeling a smug I-know-something-you-don't-know glee that made him a little sick to his stomach. "If the time of death was completely random, the murderer couldn't have known when to show up unless she'd been following the victims around, and *that* would have been noticed." He leaned over in a fit of deliberate casualness and took a juice-box out of the cooler by Scully's feet, brushing her leg almost accidentally.

She flinched again and moved her leg away, the movement jerky.

He sat back up and unwrapped the straw with shaking fingers. Some dark and nameless boy-monster was dancing savagely in the back of his mind, and Mulder couldn't seem to resist the suggestions the little devil was calling out. It was like interrogating a suspect-- the crazy feeling of flying by the seat of his pants, not knowing some of the questions he would ask until he heard them pop out of his mouth-- running on instinct all the way. Exhilarating.

But this wasn't some suspect; this was *Scully*.

He looked blindly down at the juice box and speared it with the pointy end of the straw. Thunder exploded around them at the moment the straw struck home. &lt;*A tad over-dramatic for a box of cran-grape,*&gt; he thought he said, but his lips never moved. So much for witty repartee.

Scully's voice rasped into the ringing silence after the thunder, moments before he could hear the rain again. "I don't know."

"What?" He honestly couldn't remember the question, but the word sounded smug. The great scientific Scully mind, finally stumped.

"I ... don't ... *know*," she snapped in her sandpaper voice. Her face was flushed and hot-looking, as though she was running a marathon. "If you're not going to fill in the blanks, dammit, you might as well go ahead and enlighten me as to your opinion."

It was the longest sentence she'd strung together in hours. He drank down her voice greedily, like a man wandering in the desert who comes across a full canteen, and in a moment of perfect clarity he saw that this was what he wanted, this was what he'd been prodding her for-- he wanted her to talk, that was it. Get her talking, pry her open bit by bit--

The nameless something in the back of his mind stirred at the thought.

Mulder stubbornly ignored it, and moved on.

"I think there's somebody in this town-- let's call him or her 'Pat'-- who's having an occasional spell of amnesia, experiencing heightened sexual tension, having a few weird sexual dreams where they seem to be somebody else, say, Jim Taymor." He looked at Scully. Nothing. "In the dream, Jim is making love to someone-- say, Marjorie. And at that moment, across town, Marjorie dies." Still no response. "Pat gets up, goes to work, doesn't even remember the dream, and all the while, he or she is playing host to a monster that they know nothing about."

He looked at her. She was very pale, and silent; she stared at the dashboard like a woman contemplating her worst nightmare.

"I think it's all about dreams," he continued, hating her silence. "The host, and the victims. I think that the Tochok finds its victims while they're sleeping, and I think that it can not only *keep* them asleep, but it can affect their dreams. Maybe you were right about the sleep paralysis thing--"

She jumped, as if goosed, and almost turned to face him; he saw her catch herself, and close her eyes briefly.

"-- I think maybe the Tochok can evoke the effects of sleep paralysis, so the victims can't fight back physically, only mentally-- and I bet that's why it only picks victims who are fixated on somebody. I bet the Tochok takes the form of the person that the victim most desires, that unrequited love, the one person that the victim could never resist... the one person the victim would never want to fight off."

His voice slid down the octave, resonated like the sounding board of a string bass. Scully's face screwed up in an uncharacteristic expression of pain, her eyes shut tight, her body seeming to vibrate with tension. Silent. Still silent. Shutting him out.

Why wouldn't she just *talk?*

"It's a creature that feeds on our deepest dreams," he told her softly. "The ones we don't tell anyone else, the ones we'd rather die than see dragged out into the light, those secret desires that we only think about when we're alone; a lot of killers use that sort of vulnerability, but this is the first time I've seen it used so directly..."

He trailed off, caught up in his own web of words, barely sidestepping the huge unnamed *something* stirring and whispering in his mind. Thunder muttered thickly, high overhead, and thin light flickered over Scully's paper-white face, illuminating that expression that he instinctively recognized but refused to acknowledge.

He looked out the window then, across the street at the windows of Taymor's where Amber Volney was jabbering into a telephone, an elaborate dumbshow for the FBI agents out here in the tense cold.

"I think," he said at last, "I think that the only way to kill something like that is to kill the host."

 

5:18 PM

The rain just would not let up. There had been a few times that it got a little lighter, once so much that the streetlights turned off for almost five minutes, but the storm always came back full-force, sheets of rain pelting the rented car with an odd sound like an almost-empty washing machine agitating a few lonely clothes in a sea of bubbles.

It was dusk now. Mulder was silhouetted against the dim light of the fading day, squinting to see across the street. He seemed restless, on edge; his fingers drummed on his knee almost soundlessly.

Dusk. Twilight.

His breath fogged up the window and he absently wiped it clean with a sweep   
of his hand, the moisture running down the glass like quicksilver.

Scully dug her nails into her palms and hunched down a little further into her trench coat. She was not superstitious, she refused to even consider it, but she had to admit to herself that, if she *had* been, the omens were not looking very good. Here she was, on stakeout with Mulder at twilight in a car with foggy windows. Granted, it was cold instead of hot, and the moisture in the air was composed of battering rain rather than thick humidity, but the similarities were perfectly clear to a woman of science. The only way they could be any clearer would be if Mulder decided to strip to the waist for some insane reason.

 

The image tore fire through her brain, flared along every nerve ending in a white-hot flash. She gritted her teeth and waited for it to pass, counting the seconds as if she were guessing the proximity of an approaching storm. One-thousand-one one-thousand-two one-thousand-three and the wave of flame passed over, leaving her feeling weak and shaky, her skin supersensitive.

She shuddered all over for a moment and then, helplessly, yawned. Her eyes drifted halfway closed, and her shuttered gaze fixed on Mulder's face. His good, strong, desperately handsome face, tired and stubbled and everything she could ever think of wanting.

And to think, she'd flippantly called it a Mulder-Awareness Day. Dear God. Not since Custer took on his last batch of Indians had something been so phenomenally underestimated.

She was vaguely aware that one hand had unclenched and left her lap, slowly smoothing over the upholstered no-man's-land in the direction of Mulder's thigh. For long, lazy seconds this state of events was perfectly all right-- nothing wrong here, folks-- and then some panic-button in her mind was tripped and her eyes snapped open, adrenaline slamming through her veins. She looked at her traitorous hand in horror and snatched it back, wrapping the fingers of her other hand around her wrist like a handcuff.

She had almost-- oh Christ, she'd almost--

Mulder swung around in her direction and she nearly jumped out of the car. "Wha--?" she gasped guiltily.

"She's been gone for almost ten minutes," he said, pointing his finger accusingly at the driver's side window. "She went down the hall and didn't come back."

Scully stared at him for a naked hideous moment before her numb mind could process the sentence. Oh. The stakeout. Amber Volney. "Oh."

He gnawed on his lower lip, deep in thought, and the tiger began to pace back and forth in Scully's stomach again. A desolate thought occurred to her: she was going to break. Any moment now, the tiger would fling itself against the bars of the cage and the sucker would bust wide open-- any moment now, she'd climb right the hell across the seat and into his lap and start ripping his clothes off with her teeth. It wasn't a question of *if,* anymore. Just *when.*

She shut her eyes and, hopelessly, sent up a wordless prayer for the strength to last just a little bit longer.

Suddenly she heard the driver's side door opening -- cold wind blew in on her and spattered her with fine mist, smelling like fresh wet laundry hung up to dry. The rain seemed to roar. She wrenched her eyes open just in time to watch her partner climb out of the car, moving stiffly.

"Where the hell are you going?" she yelped, too stunned to follow him.

Mulder leaned down to peek back into the car. "There's a window in Taymor's office that looks out on the alley. I'm going to sneak back there and take a look."

"Are you NUTS?" she shrilled at him, but the door shut and she was left alone in the car, exhaustion pressing on her, listening to Mulder's faint footsteps as he ran across the street in the rain.

 

The sign on the wide glass door had been flipped so that it said CLOSED, but the lights were still on at Taymor's. Mulder skimmed the front of the building, slumped a bit but not really daring to walk hunched over because that, if anything, would gain the attention of a passing motorist or someone in a nearby business.

He would bet even money that Amber had gone, skipped out the back for some weird teenaged reason, maybe headed out on a date that her father wouldn't approve of, leaving her car out in front of Taymor's as mute "proof" of her whereabouts. Taymor would probably be working late, and as long as those lights were on she'd have an alibi.

By the time Mulder made it around the back of the building, he was soaked to the skin, shivering, his teeth chattering. At least he was moving, though; at least he got to *do* something for a change.

Water poured in a steady waterfall off the gutterless edges of the roof, hissing onto the pavement and sluicing into a stream down the middle of the alley. He consulted his mental map of the interior of Taymor's and came to the conclusion that the window he had noticed yesterday should be right... abouuuuuuuuut...

Ah. There.

Slowly, cautiously, he edged up to the window and peeked inside. It was recognizably Taymor's office, all right; there was the bookcase Mulder had seen yesterday, there was the ridiculous merit award hanging on the back wall, there was the desk--

His jaw dropped, and he stared.

There were two mostly-naked people grappling passionately on the desk. One of them was Amber Volney, and the other was most certainly Jim Taymor.

"Shit," Mulder breathed, his two top picks for the office of Sexually Frustrated Tochok Host going up in smoke. The barely legal office assistant and the married owner of the company, who the hell would have thought it? Scully'd said that Amber had a crush on Taymor, but...

As he gaped through the window, Amber fumbled a hand backwards over the surface of the desk down to a drawer, yanked it open and came up with a condom. That squelched Mulder's half-formed hopes that maybe this was their first time and he *had* been right, just not *anymore*-- whatever these two were to each other, they'd practiced already. This was no awkward first encounter.

Shit.

Mulder found himself plodding back across the street, splashing through a big damn puddle that he vaguely remembered skirting on the way out. He had been *so* sure he was right. They'd sat here all day in the damn rain because he was so *sure*...

The rain came at him in waves, and he was forced to shield his eyes with one hand just to keep from being blinded. Half-drowned, freezing his ass off, and his mind in a state of pissed-off shock, he stumbled to the Crown Vic and collapsed inside.

"Scully," he said, wiping water off his face, "you're not gonna believe what I--"

He broke off as he got a good look at her and realized that she was asleep.

She was slumped, just barely, her head tipped back against the seat back and tilted slightly off center like the earth's axis. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her middle, her little fists tucked under her elbows. Even in sleep, the faint line between her eyebrows was present and accounted for, and her mouth looked thin and tense. He recognized it as her crossroads expression, when she was fighting with some decision that she didn't want to make, but had to.

He looked at her for a long time, the water dripping off him in fat beads.

She was...

She was so...

The nameless feeling in him expanded and roared, demanding attention.

"Scully," he said softly, and when that failed to wake her he leaned over and touched her shoulder. "Hey, Scully--"

Her eyes snapped open and she stared full into his eyes.

And *snarled* at him.

Her lips drew back from her teeth and her eyes slitted at him dangerously as she snarled a single word: "*Don't*--!"

He yanked his hand away so fast that it ended up splayed in the air next to his ear, drawn back in the surprised defensive posture of a man almost bitten by a trusted pet. Scully shrank back against the passenger door, breathing in harsh pants, one fist clenching and unclenching at irregular intervals as she stared at him with the burning eyes of a cornered wolf.

She looked absolutely savage.

"Scully--"

She shook her head in three short jerks.

"Scully, are you awake?" he asked suspiciously, suddenly positive that she was sleepwalking, having some kind of vivid dream; he'd heard about this sort of thing, the polar opposite of sleep paralysis, where the connection between brain and body never switched off and people went raging around in the night acting out their dreams--

"I'm--" Her eyes met his again, and the desperate way she stared at him convinced him that she definitely wasn't asleep. She was awake, all right, and horribly lucid, and she was either terrified of him or she was trying to keep herself from murdering him. He wasn't sure which.

"What the hell is *wrong* with you?" he blurted harshly, without thinking at all.

"Nothing! I'm FINE," she snarled, despite the lie that her eyes made out of the words. "I just dozed off for a-- I-- what the hell is wrong with *you*?"

His temper started to rise, and he stomped it back down again with an effort. "I just found out that this stakeout is pointless," he snapped. "We might as well go back to the motel."

"*What*?!"

"Amber Volney and her boss are over there fucking each other's brains out on his desk," he said, striking out with the blunt words as though they were fists. "That's it. That's all. End of story. We'll have to start over."

"I don't understand."

"Neither one of them can be the host if they're not sexually frustrated, and whatever sort of relationship that is, I can guarantee you they're getting their itches scratched. It pushes plausibility for one of them to be pining for somebody *else*, so there goes that angle. Neither one of them can be the host or become a victim, so there's no point in hanging around unless you really want to watch them break out the post-coital cigarettes."

He reached for the keys still in the ignition.

Her voice rasped, "Don't you *dare*."

He snapped back around to face her and stared, shocked and astounded at the challenge. "What?"

She seethed at him like a volcano. "Just because *your* theory's been   
broken doesn't mean *mine* has--"

"Oh, please," he sneered. Dull fury was starting to seep through his brain, radiating from that nameless place like blood flowing from a stab wound. You don't say six words to me all day and *now* you want to start discussing the case?"

Her eyes flashed at him in warning. "Mulder--"

"Okay," he said, his vision starting to go red. "Okay, let's discuss it. Let's discuss this theory of yours. You thought Amber was going around killing everyone who looked at Jim Taymor because she wanted him but couldn't have him. Right?"

"That doesn't mean that she still couldn't be--"

"*Right*?" he pressed, not knowing why he was goading her on this, not knowing why he needed to rub it in her face. An image flashed through his mind, something out of the cheesy adventure movies he'd watched when he was a kid: Scully hanging off a cliff by her fingertips and he was stomping on them--

Tension boiled through the car like red fog. He held Scully's gaze ruthlessly, and saw some kind of decision snap into place behind her eyes.

She turned her back on him and flung the passenger door open.

He tried to stop her as she scrambled out. "Scully --"

"Go to hell," she snapped, and slammed the door.

 

Thunder cracked the sky open above Scully just as she made it to the end of the block, and the rain seemed to intensify, stinging down on her in huge hurtling drops that she briefly mistook for hailstones. It felt as though her hair had come to life like Medusa's snakes, but that was just the freezing water streaming along her scalp, waving her hair like reeds in tiny swift-running currents.

The rain surrounded her, pounded down on her, ran cold down her face. It blurred her vision and obscured her hearing; -- the sound of the car door slamming a block behind her seemed unimaginably distant in the constant hiss of the rain, and the splashing footsteps hurrying in her direction were almost inaudible.

"SCULLY!"

She whipped around to find Mulder bearing down on her and for a moment it seemed like some kind of weird Breakfast at Tiffany's reunion scene, that he would throw his arms around her and protect her from the beating rain with his body and his wet mouth and his hands under her trench coat. The illusion was broken when he stopped in front of her and began to yell.

"GODDAMMIT, SCULLY," he roared, "GET BACK IN THE CAR!"

She balled her hands into fists. "NO!" she screamed up at him. "I've wasted ALL DAY on your STUPID STAKEOUT! Somebody's gonna DIE tonight and we wasted ALL... DAMN... DAY!" Thunder boomed through the clouds above them, shaking the world; Scully barely noticed. "You and your STUPID THEORY! We've been sitting on our ASSES all day instead of looking for a killer and because YOU guessed wrong! Somebody's gonna DIE and WE CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT!"

"If you had a better idea," Mulder yelled, "you sure as hell never told ME!"

"You wouldn't have listened ANYWAY!"

"*YOU* never tried!" he howled at her, his face dark with rage. "YOU just shut me out and IGNORED ME!!"

"DAMN you, Mulder," she screamed. "What do YOU care? It's all about your THEORY with you, I'M just here to listen like somebody in a damn SOCRATIC DIALOGUE! Well, you know what? YOUR THEORY *SUCKS*!"

He shook his head violently, water flying from his hair. "Your problem isn't my THEORY, Scully! It's something else, *isn't it*?" He stepped even closer to her, towering over her like an angry grizzly bear. "ISN'T IT?"

Terror and longing and fury all collided and exploded in her head. "*FUCK*... *YOU*!!!"

Lightning cracked above them. She turned away and started to stalk off, the rain slamming against her face.

Out of nowhere Mulder's hand latched onto her arm, right below the elbow. "*Scully*--"

She whipped around and punched him in the jaw, a hard roundhouse right. His head snapped back with the force of the blow and he overbalanced, stumbled, and fell to the ground.

Scully stared at her stunned partner for an awful moment, the rain roaring down around them. Lightning burst overhead like a flashbulb.

She turned and ran.


	15. Chapter 15

The Mo-Z Inn, Room 121  
6:15 PM

The electricity was off at the motel. Some faint illumination came through the curtains, but the sun had almost completely set, the rain was still coming down, and the streetlights were all dark. It was still warm inside, to Scully's surprise; the heat must have been on all day and apparently the blackout was of recent vintage. She fumbled through her suitcase with wet hands-- in the dark, it was difficult to ignore the nightmare thought that the sticky damp was warm blood-- and at last she came up with her flashlight.

She turned the flashlight on and swept the beam around the room. A huge ghoulish shadow rose up and batted at her with a twelve-foot wingspan, uttering a blood-curdling shriek--

Guido.

The parrot flapped his wings twice and squawked at the bright light. "JACK AND JILL WENT UP THE HILL, THEY EACH HAD A BUCK AND A--" Scully turned the flashlight away and he settled down, chukking disapprovingly.

Scully shed her dripping trench coat and hung it on one of the headless hangers in the tiny closet area. The clothes she was wearing were mostly dry, except for the bottom quarter of her dress slacks; her shoes were completely soaked and had water squishing around inside from the puddles she'd splashed through on her blind run back to the motel. She considered, shrugged, and squished her way to the bathroom.

The flashlight, thank God, balanced nicely on end. She propped it up on the lid of the toilet tank, where it illuminated the ceiling in a bright half-circle, the other half of the circle stretching down the wall like a half-moon made of silly putty. As thunder boomed outside, the flashlight rattled slightly against the porcelain, but stayed upright.

She toed off her shoes and emptied them into the sink, squinting at them critically. Not too bad. With any luck, they'd be fine after they dried. She stripped off her slacks and pantyhose; the slacks she wrung out and draped over the shower rod, the pantyhose she wadded up and tossed in the trash.

There were clean towels in the bathroom. Twice as many as there had been the night before, and Scully sensed the stealthy hand of Mae the Maid at work. Special treatment for Mulder's sake.

Her stomach twisted at that and she yanked a towel out of the stack with such violence that the remaining towels went everywhere like a white terry cloth avalanche. She almost stooped down to gather them up again, went so far as to stretch out one hand toward a little washcloth perched companionably next to the flashlight, but the gesture brought her bruised knuckles into view and stopped her cold.

She'd hit him.

This hadn't been some playful punch on the shoulder; she'd really clocked him. And if the way her hand was aching was any indication, she'd hurt him. The thought made her head buzz and the world seem to tip sideways as though she were drunk.

Her numb mind continued to churn out short-term plans like a ticker-tape machine spewing out paper. Dry off. Put fresh clothes on. Call the hospital, check on how many stomach pumps they had and whether one was missing, and ask about any medical supply stores in the area. Call Dr. Marek and see if there was any new development in the analysis of the mystery substance they'd found. Go through the employment rosters from Taymor's again and see if anything popped out at her.

Apologize to Mulder.

The thought came out of the deep, shattering the tidy arrangement of surface plans, and suddenly the ugly glut of mixed emotions came welling up too. The rain had frozen her mind as well as her feet, but now everything was thawing out and she couldn't stop thinking. Too many thoughts, crowding her head, overwhelming her.

 

She ground the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, blinding herself for a moment; for some reason it made the thoughts quiet down to a dull constant mutter instead of a hurricane of huge, shrieking, horrified voices. A little space to think in.

Fine, all right, she was going to have to deal with this, but first things first. She dried her wet hair to a general dampness by rubbing it with a towel, and used a fresh one to roughly dry off her feet and calves. Some sort of pants, then. She left the bathroom, walking with short, jerky steps, the steel-wool carpet exfoliating the hell out of her water-softened feet. The flashlight stayed behind, illuminating the ceiling of an empty room; she'd only be a minute, really, why bother with hauling the dumb thing along?

She was pulling on a pair of flannel pajama bottoms in the dark bedroom when car headlights swept across her window. Her head jerked up and she froze, like a cat going stock-still on a fence with its back arched and one paw in the air. The car motor idled for a moment out in the dark-- a familiar motor, she'd been listening to it for days now-- and then switched off. Car door opened, car door shut. Footsteps, crunching through the wet gravel. Keys jingling outside.

Mulder's door peeled open with a rubbery sound, then slammed again. It was eerily quiet without electricity-- no televisions, no little refrigerator motors running; mostly, though, there was the spooky lack of that almost inaudible hiss that every electric light and appliance gives off. Scully could hear every one of Mulder's hesitant footsteps as he crossed the room, the *chink!* as he tossed his keys onto the bed, the mellow *bong* as he accidentally ran into a trash can and the muttered curse that followed. It was sort of thrilling to stand in the dark and listen; it was almost as if the wall wasn't there and they were in the same dark warm room, neither one able to see the other. Almost... intimate. It gave her a chance to realize just how well she knew his little noises, realize that she'd know his footstep among a thousand others.

The thought floated to the top of her mind again, unstoppable, implacable: *apologize*.

She took one step toward the door without really meaning to, and suddenly she knew just what would happen if she tried to apologize, and it made her feel both furious and nauseous. Not that he wouldn't forgive her -- when it came down to it, taking her temper out on him and decking him in the rain was a small thing compared to the other betrayals Mulder had survived in life-- but she just *knew* that the bastard would ask her to explain herself.

He wouldn't let it go with a simple "sorry." Oh no, Mulder would want a *talk*. She'd have to humiliate herself by admitting that her anger had been the flip side of the unassuaged lust that had been tearing her up for days. Goddammit.

Worse, to have to face him and tell him these private, secret things when she was still worn out with wanting him. She'd broken once today already, when she lost her temper-- it was not unimaginable that she might shatter down the weakened lines of the first fracture. She didn't know which direction it would go; she might kiss him or she might kill him.

It was a toss-up.

Her stomach twisted violently as she realized just how much she wanted that to happen. How much she wanted to break. There was a limit, dammit, a definite limit to how long any kind of tension could be maintained without going insane.

She stared warily into the warm dark in the direction of the connecting door and listened to Mulder rummage around in his suitcase and then start walking around the room with more confidence. Probably found his flashlight, just like she had. She heard him cross into the bathroom and stay there for a long time, probably drying off, maybe taking a look at his jaw. Most likely the bruise was forming already, the outraged blood vessels flaring color that would look black in the dim light of his flashlight.

 

Mulder rocketed through Scully's front door seconds after the sound of the gunshot had died away, his semiautomatic at the ready, the unlatched door flying into the wall hard enough to put a dent in the drywall. Scully looked up at him with wide eyes, her weapon at her side, her face pure white.

"What happened?" he demanded.

One side of her mouth jerked up in a humorless smile, then down again. "I found the host."

"What?" He trained his gun in a sweep around the room, expecting an intruder to leap out from behind some furniture somewhere. That was before he saw the birdcage.

Feathers and blood were everywhere. The little corpse was lying on the floor of the cage, one wing cocked up as though Guido was waving goodbye.

Mulder lowered his weapon to his side and stared. After a moment, he felt Scully join him. They stood side by side in silence, looking for a long time at the mess.

Finally, Mulder roused himself to speak. "You know," he said, looking down at the crown of Scully's fantastically rumpled hair, "there's a Monty Python joke in here somewhere."

"Just leave it alone, Mulder."


	16. Chapter 16

The Mo-Z Inn, Room 121  
Fifteen minutes later

 

"Gatorade, Sheriff."

"Gatorade?"

"Gatorade. Playing host to the Tochok probably drained the host's body of certain chemicals that were replenished by the melted viscera of the victims. Sort of like Gatorade."

Volney pinned Mulder with a look of patient irritation, the expression of choice for law enforcement officers across the country when dealing with Mulder in one of his more talkative moods. "Agent Mulder," he said sharply, "have I mentioned that I was already sound asleep when Jeff Murray called my house to tell me that you two were shooting up his motel?"

"Yes, you have, and incidentally, as *we* have already mentioned, there was only one shot fired," Mulder said, straight-faced. Scully expected him to add 'and Agent Scully was the only one involved in the gunfire' but instead, Mulder neatly sidestepped the issue of the origin of that one shot and moved on. "A shot which, I might add, has effectively disabled the murderer by separating the murderer from its physical host with no means of reentry."

Volney studied Mulder with a long, suspicious stare. "Tell me, Agent Mulder," he said at last, "are you on any kind of medications I should know about?"

Scully sighed. It always came to this.

"I know how this sounds, Sheriff," Mulder reassured him, but the reassurance was a joke. She'd seen it before. He was already on Planet Mulder, thinking that he was sounding sane and professional when in actuality he was too excited about the case coming together to just *shut up*.

The fact that he was still barefoot and wearing his sweats and FBI Academy T-shirt did not help matters.

"I hadn't even considered that the host might not be human, but in hindsight it makes perfect sense. There have been studies done on parrots that suggest that their speech is not just mimicry, but that they can actually put together words and symbols in a manner similar to language; if we take that as a given, it's only a small step to assuming that the Tochok would find a parrot just as hospitable as a human being."

Volney turned and pondered the mess in the parrot cage, chewing on his moustache. He glanced at Scully, his impersonal visual inspection sweeping over her and taking in the robe and slippers as well as the bed-dry hair and the spatters of parrot blood which she could still feel drying against her skin. She met his gaze, lifting her chin a little.

"*You're* awful quiet, Agent Scully," the sheriff said accusingly, as though he was checking on her sanity as well but didn't have much hope for a satisfactory answer. "Do you have any thoughts on this?"

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mulder lean against the wall and fold his arms across his chest, apparently very interested in her answer.

She cleared her throat. "I have a slightly different theory than the one that Agent Mulder subscribes to. There was a foreign organic substance discovered in the blood work from the latest victims; I suspect that under further study this will prove to be a kind of mutant allergen borne by the parrot which only select people were susceptible to. The allergen seems to have created a complex reaction, the primary result being the visceral pyrexia which was the cause of death for the four victims. There seem to be some lesser effects including hallucinogenic episodes, such as vivid, violent dreams and some residual hallucinations immediately after waking."

Volney looked so surprised and pleased to hear a sane theory that Scully almost expected him to start purring like a big tomcat in a patch of sun. "Well. Does this constitute a public health hazard, in your opinion?"

"It might," Scully admitted, "but it would be an easily contained one. The body of the parrot should be handled as a biohazard and properly packaged for further study. Those people who have already been affected by the allergen, including Agent Mulder and myself, should be tested for the foreign organic substance before being allowed to handle weapons or operate a moving vehicle. We may otherwise present a danger to the public."

Mulder shot Scully a surprised look. She ignored it.

"While I was-- hallucinating-- earlier tonight, I imagined that the parrot posed an immediate threat to myself and to Agent Mulder, and I shot it," she said. "This may or may not have been due to some subconscious realization about the nature of the recent deaths and the parrot's possible involvement in them. Either way, I acted without thinking, and if any repercussions result from my actions I will take full responsibility."

She gave this speech matter-of-factly, keeping a stone wall of calm between herself and the creeping feeling of childish dread, the feeling that she was going home from class today with a note for her parents in her backpack. Mulder was still watching her closely, an odd color of concern tingeing the edges of his expression.

Volney appeared to be chewing on the insides of both cheeks. After a moment of deliberation he shook his head and snorted. "I don't know a damn thing about medicine so I'm gonna take your word on this one, Agent Scully. If you two just set tight I'll get some people out from Bryan Memorial to take a look at you and take the parrot away." He rummaged through his jacket pockets like a man contentedly scratching an itch and came up with a sleek cell phone that looked to be the size of the big man's thumb. He punched a single button and brought it up. "Rob? It's Mike Volney. Yeah, I'll hold."

Scully cleared her throat delicately. "Er, Sheriff..."

"Hmm?"

"About the parrot's owner--"

Volney brought the tiny phone down to the level of his collarbone. "If I may be frank, Agent Scully, I don't give a damn about the parrot's owner. That bird bit one of my deputies, it tried to bite me, it's been a serious pain in my ass and now you're saying it's the reason that four people in my jurisdiction have died. As far as I'm concerned, you did us all a favor. When Marjorie's sister shows up tomorrow I'll tell her that the parrot died of natural causes and we burned the body." The sheriff crinkled his copper eyes at Scully. "Does that answer your question?"

 

The water was cold, but Scully splashed it on her face anyway, scrubbing at the tiny shriveled patches of dried bird blood. The relief of getting it off her skin made her a little lightheaded ... or maybe that was just a delayed reaction to having to give a sample of her own blood.

The bathroom door creaked behind her and she jerked her head up, startled. Mulder was standing in the doorway, rubbing at the bandage on the inside of his right elbow. He met her gaze and smiled sheepishly. "Hey."

"Hey. Can you hand me a towel?"

"Sure." He ran one long arm out and hooked a towel off the rack, tossing it to her with the casual grace of an outfielder flipping a ball out into the bleachers.

"Thanks." She dried her face and folded the towel in half, then in half again. "Are they done with you already, or did Jean Denison show up with the death squad and scare you off?"

"Funny you should ask," he said, leaning back against the door frame.

"They're *not* done with you?"

Mulder shook his head vigorously. "No, no, they're done with me. Took my blood, took my weapon, the works. Funny you should mention Jean Denison, I mean."

Scully leaned one hip against the cold porcelain of the sink and cocked an eyebrow at him. "Is she here?"

"Nope. And she's not going to be. They caught her in Volney's office reading those secret files he was keeping on this case; turns out she's been the one leaking information to the media all this time. According to the hospital staff, Jean has a sort of a thing for Volney and this was some kind of desperate bid for attention. Volney's so mad, he wants to bring her up on charges for obstruction of justice."

"He'll have a hard time proving it on a case like this one,"  
Scully said.

"Yeah, well." Mulder shrugged. He studied her strangely for a moment, then turned a few degrees to fake a relaxed punch at the door frame. "They're coming back around ten tomorrow morning to check on us."

"I know. I'm the one who suggested it."

"You don't..." Mulder stopped, squinched his eyes a little, and tried again. "Do you really believe this allergen theory?"

Scully looked down at the towel in her hands and frowned critically. She shook it open and refolded it with slow, careful movements.

"Scully?"

"I wouldn't have suggested it to the sheriff if I didn't think it had merit, Mulder." The towel was still not quite straight; she flipped it open again with a sigh and started lining up the corners.

Mulder reached out and captured her busy hands in his, gently taking the towel away from her. He was suddenly very close; she could feel him looking down at the top of her head as she looked down at her hands, stiff and awkward in Mulder's grasp. "That wasn't what I asked," he said, his voice very low. "I asked if you *believe* it."

She tried to say yes, but it stuck in her throat. Instead, she shook her head slowly and said, "You don't want me to answer that, Mulder."

He made an indecipherable noise and let her hands slide away. "You're probably right."

She tipped her head up to frown at him and promptly forgot all about doing so when she spotted the purpling bruise on his jaw. "Oh," she said faintly, and reached up, leaning to one side to get a better look. Her fingers skimmed through the air over his jaw, not quite touching him; somehow, she couldn't. Green heat came off the bruise, bleeding into her hand through the millimeters between them. "Oh, Mulder," she murmured in soft horror, staring at the damage she'd done. "I didn't think I-- how does it feel?"

A wry smile creased his skin under her fingertips and she looked up in surprise. His gaze met and held hers, searching for something. His face was strained, somehow, and a little sad; the out-of-place smile was heartbreaking, at once closed off and vulnerable. "Don't worry about it, slugger," he said with a little shrug. "No permanent damage done."

"I-- Mulder, I'm so--"

"I said," he told her, pulling her hands gently away from his face, "don't worry about it."

She frowned at him in confusion, her hands still thoughtlessly hanging in the air between them. The grinding need to touch him that had made her hands ache for days had subsided, but something, some need, remained-- the need to reach out and smooth the worry from his face, to step into his arms and hold him as he held her, to speak gentle words of comfort. These were good things, partnerly things, but some new color had bled into them like ink into tissue paper. She wanted to touch him, but she couldn't be certain of her reasons. Somewhere in the storm, her bold black borderlines had faded and half-washed away; all the landmarks were strange, as if she was looking up at the night sky in Australia, searching for Orion.

Her hands drifted down to her sides by themselves, lost.

"All right," she said. After a moment she folded her arms across her chest.

"Besides," he said indistinctly, "I deserved it."

She shook her head, not because it wasn't true but because her guilt outweighed the reason. "You didn't deserve *that*."

"Yeah, I did." He looped a mirthless smile at her, exhaustion printed around his eyes. "I did." They were both silent for a moment, the shifting of Mulder's bare feet on the slick tiles very loud in the tiny room. Mulder looked at the floor. "I had a dream," he said in a quiet voice she hardly recognized. "When I was asleep before, I mean."

"Everybody dreams, Mulder," she snapped, more harshly than she meant to, knowing where he was going and not wanting to hear it.

Intent on some interior goal, he didn't seem to process her tone. "This was different," he insisted, frowning. "I think--"

"Don't."

He heard her then, looked up with some new expression mixing with the hurt in his eyes. "Scully--"

"Don't," she repeated, softer this time, unable to think of anything else to say.

Mulder's mouth opened and then shut again. He seemed to deflate slightly, sagging back against the door frame. He gazed at the toilet and shrugged, the careless gesture of a man berating himself for something. "One thing," he said, "and you don't have to answer if you don't want to. What woke you up?"

"Oh." It took a moment for her to stop bracing herself against some unasked personal question and answer the one that *had* been asked. "I'd left the light switch on, and when the electricity came back on, so did the lights." She looked at him warily, but didn't ask what was coming next.

"Ahhh," Mulder sighed, and his lips curved upward. "I left my lights off. No wonder you couldn't wake me up."

"What?"

"The eye muscles are the only ones not frozen up by sleep paralysis. You told me that yourself, remember?"

"I don't see where you're going with this."

Mulder leaned back against the bathroom wall and gave her a hollow smile. "Every victim died in the dark. That's where I'm going with this." He seemed to think of something and made a face. "Except for Fred Schmidt. I'm not really sure how he broke free; maybe the Tochok was so dependent on the mental aspects of its victims that Fred was just too crazy to get killed." He looked at the toilet again, but she doubted he actually saw it.

Scully studied his face for a long time. She wanted to reach out and take his hand; instead, she turned back to the sink. "Do you really believe that thing exists?"

He caught her gaze in the mirror, his eyes weary and too knowing for comfort. "Don't you?"

She looked away.

 

The parrot was long gone, removed from its cage with dead rustling sounds that Mulder would have paid half a year's salary to avoid hearing. The cage was also gone. The parrot food was still there, sitting alone and forlorn in a sea of white plastic sheeting where the remnants of the mess had been covered, just in case. Scully had packed and hauled her suitcase to Mulder's room a few minutes ago, reiterating to all who would listen that this was only a temporary stop on the way to whatever new room the Mo-Z management would come up with. A few eyebrows had been raised among the people from Bryan Memorial, and a pair of deputies had exchanged a significant look of knowing amusement, but Scully hadn't seen it and Mulder didn't give a damn. Let them think what they wanted.

Mulder had been fighting idly with the connecting door for lack of anything better to do. It seemed to be loosening, although that might have had more to do with the slackening rain than any of his efforts. He took a surreptitious look around the room as Volney shooed the Death Squad out into the thin rain, letting in another whirlwind of cold air. The blood-spattered bedclothes had been stuffed in a large Hefty bag, and the exposed mattress lay staring at the ceiling, its belly patterned by brown discolorations like sprawling birthmarks.

Cold. Empty. Mulder sighed, feeling disappointed for no definable reason, and returned to wrestling pointlessly with the door.

Behind him, Volney whuffed out a great sigh of relief. "All right, Agent Mulder," he announced in the tones of a bartender declaring last call, "time to lock up. I'll be by in the morning to check in and get your weapons back to you." He shifted around, looking slightly guilty. "I don't really think you're a threat to the public, you understand."

"No, no, I got it," Mulder assured him, twisting the doorknob as he wrenched at the stubborn wood under his hands. "I've been through it before-- Scully has a thing about covering our asses."

The sheriff gave him a look of bemused irritation. "Can't imagine why," he growled, and made a gesture toward the drizzle outside the open door. "You comin'?"

"Not yet, hang on. I just want to--" The door made a sharp ripping noise, cutting him off. Mulder gaped at it in surprise as it swung serenely open. He remembered Volney and turned to give him a sheepish smile. "It was stuck," he explained in a vague way.

"Hmph," Volney snorted. "Gonna go through that way, then?"

"Yeah."

"Right," Volney said, and something suspiciously like a smile creased his face. "See you in the morning, Agent Mulder."

"Night." Mulder walked through the connecting door as the  
other door shut and locked.

The room was dim, barely illuminated by the yellow light peeking out of the bathroom. At first he didn't see Scully anywhere, just her luggage set neatly next to the outside door, with her trench coat draped over it. He shrugged, and turned to shut the door.

Scully was curled up in the droopy armchair, fast asleep. Her cheek was pillowed on the left arm of the chair, just a few inches away from a worn spot leaking a tiny cloud of stuffing. She was still wearing her robe, flannel pajama bottoms and thick white socks poking out from underneath it. One hand was loosely fisted and burrowed halfway under her cheek like the last remnant of a babyhood thumb-sucking habit. Her hair curled in every direction, twisting up to cling to the fabric of the armchair back, falling over her cheek and obscuring her eyes. As he watched, her lips parted slightly and she sighed in her sleep.

Mulder's breath caught in his throat as if he'd been punched in the gut. A stripe of queasiness that wasn't quite pain sliced down the inside of his sternum, like a pathologist's scalpel cutting him open from the inside out. It pooled like blood in a place slightly above his stomach, right where his center would have been if he flung his arms and legs out like a starfish.

He could not stop looking at her.

A dismayed revelation unfolded in his mind like a magician's flower. He stuffed it back down as fast as it came up, but he'd never really got the knack of folding the damned things up in real life and he didn't do much better with the one in his head. Party-colored shreds of thought were left over, too bright to ignore: thoughts of kneeling by his sleeping partner and burying his face in her stomach, her hands touching his hair like a benediction, the rest of the world flowing past them unnoticed, unimportant.

Some kind of sound escaped him as he watched the dim light gleam off her hair, making it glow like banked coals. He knew better than to go to her; he'd already done the rejection thing once or twice today, thank you, and all he had to show for it was a sore jaw with a bruise the approximate size and shape of a kiwi fruit. He knew better than to go anywhere near her.

He went anyway.

It seemed to be a long trek across the rough motel carpet, and by the time he knelt in front of the armchair he had a purpose in mind, a goal of waking her up and getting her out of his room before his mouth ran away like the gingerbread man and he ended up with a matching bruise somewhere even less comfortable. His hand reached out for her without asking the brain for permission and before he quite realized it he was brushing air-fine hair out of her eyes. "Hey," he whispered, unable to take his eyes from her sleeping face. "Hey, Scully."

"Mmm." It was the barest hint of sound, accompanied by an eyebrow twitch.

"Scully, wake up."

She slept on, her breathing slow and regular.

"Scuh-lee," he murmured, tasting her name on his lips. His fingers brushed over her warm cheek and she made another faint sound, her mouth curving slightly in a sleep-smile. "Hey," he told her softly, "come on, this chair is going to give you a sore neck if you sleep on it all night."

"Mmm."

His fingertip traced her jawline with the most delicate of touches, flesh painting flesh with a thread of blood-warmth. As he reluctantly took his hand away, that soft smile spread a little further across her face. Mulder watched her for a long moment, caught in glass.

She was...

She was so...

Twin curves of lashes stirred, lifted, and her eyes focused on him. She made a faint sound and blinked slowly, once. "Mulder," she said, her voice rough with sleep.

"Hi."

She blinked again, yawning a little on the long downswing. "I fell asleep."

"Yeah," he agreed, adjusting his legs so that he was sitting in front of the left arm of the armchair, his face level with hers. "Comfortable?"

"Mmm," she rumbled, her eyes drooping. "Not too bad."

She stayed that way for almost a minute, her breathing slow. He cradled her face with his gaze, expecting her to fall asleep, but a sliver of blue appeared between the lashes of one eye and waxed lazily to a half-moon. He smiled at her, that odd queasy pain slipping leisurely up his ribs again. "Hungry?"

"Yeah," she yawned. "Too tired to eat, though." The blue waned to a sliver again, kept from total eclipse by sheer determination. Mulder rested his temple against the arm of the chair and watched her as though she might disappear. Scully arched an eyebrow at him, the one matching her single open eye. "What?"

"Nothing," he said, and closed his eyes, her warm sleep-smell surrounding him and twisting in his lungs until it made his head spin.

"Are you tired?" she asked in a voice too low for Mulder to tell if the words were in her doctor tone or her partner tone.

"Yeah." He opened his eyes and found her looking straight at him with her most enigmatic expression-- sleepier than normal, but unreadable due to the droopy eyelids.

She studied him for a minute or two and then a crooked little smile appeared like a crack in an egg. "Hmmmm," she mumbled drowsily. The pale hand stuffed under her cheek worked its way back out to freedom, hesitated clumsily in midair for a long moment, and then slipped over his face, cupping his cheek. She still smelled faintly of gunpowder. He could feel each of her fingers burning a separate and distinct furrow into his skin. "You should sleep," she whispered huskily, her thumb brushing a hot, shallow arc near his jaw, inches from the angry bruise that same little hand had given him only a few hours earlier.

"So should you," he whispered back.

Her eyes drooped and she made an amused sound that was thick with exhaustion. "Understatement," she mumbled, and her eyes glided shut. Her hand relaxed and succumbed to gravity, sliding down to rest on the side of his neck. "Mulder..." She sighed his name as if she were already sleeping, and for all he knew she was.

"Hmm?"

Her voice was almost inaudible, lips moving around a soft slip of air. "You said you had a dream..."

Mulder's stomach flipped over and he exhaled hard. "Yeah," he managed, too aware of the bed behind him that still stank of guilty pleasures and guiltier dreams, soaked into the sheets with his sweat.

She breathed out a slow stream of warmth that curled around his face like fog. "Me too."

In the moment it took for him to go from puzzlement to comprehension, she fell asleep.

Mulder watched her sleep, thoughts buzzing around his head like lazy bumblebees, the curve of her hand heavy and warm on his neck. He reached up and wrapped his fingers around her forearm, anchoring her to him.

"I know," he whispered.


	17. Prologue

Cooper Street  
Tehtonka, Kansas  
Wednesday, 9:36 PM

"... refused to comment on the mysterious death of Lola Gruber. Sources close to Sheriff Volney, however, have indicated that although the local woman was found Tuesday morning, it is very likely that she had been dead since sometime Monday night..."

*THUNK!!*

Aimee opened her eyes.

At first her head ached too much to focus, and all she was aware of was the scratchy couch cushion under her cheek that smelled like an allergy sufferer's worst nightmare. One hand was cold; she let it scrabble around until wiry carpet fibers under her fingertips told her that she'd fallen asleep with one arm hanging off the couch. The other arm was faint and numb, folded hard under her torso like paper in an envelope.

She'd had the flu for three days, and at the moment it felt like she'd been asleep for all of it. She shifted onto her side and the skin over her breasts and stomach went hot, fizzing and boiling as the blood came back to the surface. Fever spiked down her arms as she moved, forking at her hands like lightning.

"-- sources also revealed that there was no sign of forced entry at Gruber's home, although they admit that there is some question of whether or not the front door was locked--"

The jangling silver light in front of her resolved itself into the television screen. Sideways, from her perspective, but otherwise recognizable as the KSNW news. Channel three. Normally she wouldn't be caught dead watching KSNW, but at the moment it didn't seem so bad.

God, she really must be sick.

"-- whether this bizarre death could have been the result of natural causes," the news anchor announced with a solemn face. Stephanie something. Big-haired bimbo. "We caught up with Sheriff Volney at the county courthouse today."

The shot of Stephanie cut away to grainy footage of a big man with a gray mustache, angry and on the move. His mouth moved silently for a moment before the sound kicked in. "-- telling you that this was not-- I wouldn't call it an evisceration, no. Who told you that?"

*THUNK!*

Aimee finally remembered what woke her up in the first place, and twisted around to face the ceiling. "GREG!" she croaked. Her throat was dry, her mouth stiff with ropy saliva; she had to work hard just to form her brother's name. "HEY! GREG! CUT IT OUT!"

Silence from upstairs. She listened suspiciously, the skin of her temples feeling thin and papery over her pounding veins. Nothing. She let her head fall back against the couch cushion, thinking of her lease and the hefty deposit she had on this place. He'd better not be moving furniture. Last time he'd knocked a four-inch hole in his wall and had seen nothing wrong with just hanging a poster over it and calling the problem solved. If he pulled something like that again, she'd kick his ass out-- if she didn't kill him first.

The television flickered and the sound cut out for a moment. After a moment, just as it always did, it snapped back to normal. "-- victim was found in her home near Tehtonka late Tuesday morning by her sister-in-law. KSNW's John Eskridge spoke with Joanne Gruber earlier today."

The close-up of the reporter cut away to a shot of a tear-streaked woman with lanky hair, standing in too-bright sunlight in front of some dingy siding. "It was awful," the woman said in a strained voice. She sniffled once and dabbed her eyes on her sleeve in a businesslike manner, as if ignoring the implications of tears would keep them from overwhelming her again. "I knocked for such a long time, you know, and I thought Lola was just downstairs doing laundry so I walked on in, but when I finally found her she was upstairs on her bed and she was... she was..." The woman teared up again, half-turning from the camera as she bit her lip and fought for control. The camera stayed on her, merciless in its blank curiosity, until she shook her head and waved it away.

Back to the news anchor, who gave the camera a look of solemn concern that came a moment too late for authenticity; someone in the control room must be giving the cues late. "If you have any information on the death of Lola Gruber, please call the Cooper County Sheriff's Office." A number appeared at the bottom of the screen.

That was quite enough about the murder for one day. Aimee fumbled at the coffee table for the remote control, knocking over a bottle of medicine. The lid was off. Crap. Red liquid oozed over the surface of the table, filling the room with the cloying stink of cherry-flavored alcohol. Clots of the stuff hung off the lip of the bottle.

She made a face and pried the remote out of the mess. The flu had left her so weak that she had to use both hands. Gooey strands dangled from the damn thing as she took aim at the television and fired off a channel change.

"-- creating a line of thunderstorms moving in our direction," said the Channel Ten weatherman. "The good news for us is that the front is moving very slowly, so it won't be here until Sunday or so. The bad news is, this batch of thunderstorms is a doozy. Get out and enjoy that warm weather while you can, folks--"

The remote was starting to shake dramatically in Aimee's hands. She braced her elbow against the edge of the couch and changed the channel again.

"-- half off the retail price. This is a limited time offer--"

She started to drift off again, the sticky remote coming to rest against the collar of her flannel pajamas. It would stain, of course. She didn't care.

"Ohhhhhhh..." a male voice groaned.

Her eyes snapped open and she stared at the television. What the hell was she watching?

A tanned, muscular man on her television flashed a toothy smile. "Order the Oxyciser NOW and get a FREE instructional video!"

An infomercial. What the--

"Mmmmmm..."

It wasn't coming from the television. Her gaze drifted back to the ceiling.

A gravely, throat-rending moan came from her brother's room.

Great. She was down here dying of the flu, so of course Greg went upstairs to whack off. Of course. Aimee rolled her eyes and turned the volume up.

"This amazing machine would ordinarily cost you more than one hundred and fifty dollars, but if you order TODAY, you can have the award-winning Oxyciser in your home for only eighty-nine ninety-five!"

A longer groan from upstairs, this one with a sort of a yipping noise at the end. The infomercial did nothing to cover it up. God, why hadn't she rented a house with carpet? Or better yet, one that was soundproofed?

She extended her entire arm to point the remote this time, as though somehow that would make it work better and faster.

On the television screen, the camera swung dizzily down to focus on a row of spandex-clad women lying on their backs, their thighs and buttocks propped up on rapidly oscillating plastic stirrups, their feet skittering around on the floor. The jiggling was minimal on two of the women, but the other three were bobbling like statuesque gelatin molds.

"Ugh," Aimee blurted, starting to feel seasick.

"OHHHHHHHHHH," Greg enthused from upstairs, louder than ever.

This time Aimee pointed the remote at the television with such violence that it struck the edge of the coffee table. The battery panel popped open on impact and the batteries tumbled out, rolling out of reach.

Upstairs, Greg's moans continued to spiral toward ecstasy. On the television, the women continued to jiggle, hips grinding away at thin air. To add insult to injury, the screen flickered and the sound cut out again.

"Fuck." Aimee flung the disemboweled remote at the television.

That was when Greg screamed.

Aimee lurched to her feet and started scrambling toward the stairs before she really thought about it. This wasn't normal. She'd heard a lot of Greg's self-induced love life back when he'd hit puberty, and a couple of times since then, and this wasn't normal. This sounded bad. This sounded like he'd hurt himself.

She tried not to focus on what Greg could have done to himself that would have made him scream like that. Instead, she concentrated on climbing the stairs without killing herself.

The first of the broad wooden stairs made a sound like a shot as she stepped on it, and even though it *always* did that and she should have expected it, she shrieked. Her vision wavered -- when she looked wildly down at the step, her feet seemed to be small and very far away, as though she were looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.

Her legs were shaking too hard to support her; she collapsed to her knees and hauled herself up one stair after another on all fours, the world tilting back and forth like something out of a funhouse. The yellow light bulbs dangling from the ceiling seemed to strobe past her. An awful silence seeped down from her brother's room in cold waves, her own noises insignificant compared to that icy quiet. She could distantly hear the wheezy gasps of her own breathing and the gritty noise of the dirty wood under her hands, and God, wouldn't it be hysterically funny when she got upstairs and it turned out that she'd panicked just because her brother had been masturbating to a particularly good picture of Brad Pitt?

They'd have a good laugh over this later. They would. And then she was going to get a really, really thick layer of carpet for his room to make sure this never happened again.

Concentrate on that. Concentrate on later.

The last stair came as a shock. She collapsed on the sudden horizon of the hallway, her hands fluttering against the floor like pinned butterflies. "Greg?" she called weakly, her voice cracking on her brother's name. No answer. "Greg? Are you okay?"

The cold silence soaked into her joints and filled her ears with a seashell roar. She struggled down the hallway on bruised and aching knees, her hand trailing along the cold wall for balance, the flannel of her pajama bottoms whispering secrets along the hardwood floor. She froze at the door for an eternity, staring up at the monolithic stretch of wood.

She stretched a shaking hand into the unknown.

She knocked.

"... Greg?"

There was no answer.

Downstairs, the television screamed to life. "ORDER NOW! LOSE WEIGHT THE NATURAL WAY WITH OXYCIZER! RECOMMENDED BY DOCTORS!"

Aimee tried to pretend that she was respecting Greg's privacy, that the reason she couldn't bring herself to open that door was simple fear of interrupting some kind of... private moment.

The frozen knot in the pit of her stomach testified to her lie.

"YOUR FRIENDS WILL BE AMAZED!"

She pushed the door open with numb hands.

Dim yellow light from the hallway flooded into her brother's darkened room. Aimee's world tilted again and she leaned hard against the wall, panting, her knuckles white where they clutched the door frame.

Her mouth was dry. She breathed in a mouthful of silence and her brother's name whispered out of her like ice flakes.

She licked her lips uselessly. "Greg?" She couldn't see him. Her fist clopped woodenly against the door even as she realized there was no reason to knock. "Greg, are you--"

"JUST FIFTEEN MINUTES A DAY, THREE TIMES A WEEK!"

There was an odd smell in the air. She noticed it on a level just above subliminal. The smell of that hideous silence, perhaps.

"Greg?"

She shuffled into her brother's room on her knees like a child, recoiling from the silence, from the images of what could be. Her eyes were wide open, the staring, straining eyes of a woman searching the dark for a recent nightmare.

She found it.

Her legs gave out and she folded up like a broken doll, her butt hitting her heels and grinding the tops of her ankles against the hard floor, her hand still clamped on the doorknob.

Greg was draped across his bed like a rag doll. His shirt was off, and she could see a searing red mark, like a sunburn ... red all over his chest and stomach, red where his thin frame seemed caved in, hideously slumped, hideously *wrong*.

Aimee hitched in a breath and tried not to scream.

"... Greg?"

He didn't move.

"...Greg??"

"YOUR LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!"

The smell was much stronger in here. A sloppy odor, like unwashed socks going to seed in a men's locker room... and, subtly, playing along underneath it, something familiar. Like bacon. A homey odor at odds with the cold fear that was tearing at her stomach with razor claws.

Greg wasn't breathing. She could see it from here; he wasn't breathing. Her world dimmed and stumbled but her brother's body remained at the epicenter of the quake.

He was dead. He was dead he was dead he was dead he was d--

"CALL TODAY!"

That smell wasn't bacon. Aimee suddenly realized what it was.

Sour acid rushed up her throat-- she turned to one side barely in time and threw up violently. The thin vomit pattered irregularly onto the bare floor, puddling and trickling down into the cracks between the boards. It hung off her lips in long glistening strands. Some stunned, distant part of her mind noticed the bright pink color and she thought of blood and bubblegum ice cream before remembering the cherry-flavored medicine. The smell hit her, and she heaved again, fruitlessly, because even the stench of her own vomit wasn't enough to cover up the sweet smoky smell caressing the back of her throat.

The smell of her brother's roasted flesh.

**Author's Note:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE:
> 
> Attention: Lena has not been allowed to compose this note herself, as it would have delayed this story by at least another  
> month. Instead, her beta team has elected me, Shannon, to tell you that this story has been in the works for more than a year and has had more editors than a dog has fleas. She has been threatened within an inch of her life if she ever, ever attempts another story of this magnitude. This is her Magnum Opus, so enjoy it. She'll never write anything over 50K again or we'll break all her fingers.
> 
>  
> 
> ... Pssst, this is me, Lena. Shhh. Don't tell Shannon, but I'm gonna write my own notes anyway.
> 
> I feel like I've been writing this thing my entire life. Certainly I've been writing it for most of my fanfiction career; there are people that met me a year ago who don't remember a time when I *wasn't* working on what we called parrotfic. Many people have stepped in to help out over that year, and hopefully I can thank them all.
> 
> First and forever, I have to thank Erlybird, giver of the world's best feedback, constant cheerleader, and den mother to the most unruly pack of fic puppies ever seen. When I took the dead parrot out of my first fic and substituted a regular corpse, Erly demanded that the parrot get a story of his own, and so was parrotfic born. Who knew?
> 
> Lysandra, my first beta reader and She Who Knows Where Quotation Marks Ought To Go, for constant beta duties, for ordering me to stop outlining and start writing, and for not laughing when I presented her with a truly horrible first paragraph an hour after it was ordered. Not to mention for her Herculean effort this week as she ran a quick final beta on four chapters every day (five, today). I owe her much cheese.
> 
> shannono, the Grammar Nazi, for beta services, a stellar introduction to baseball at Wrigley Field and the strangest "revise this thing NOW" stalk I have ever encountered.
> 
> KatyBlue, who not only responded to my gushy feeback but also asked about my next story and sent me tons of amazing information on parrots, including the idea to make the sucker sing.
> 
> Jean Robinson, for stalking me on a story that hadn't even been posted as a WIP.
> 
> wen, for stalking me gorgeously with a cover for the newly named Gutless, for mentioning that my ending really ought to act like an ending and then for graciously forgiving me for acting like a jackass about having to rewrite it.
> 
> Marasmus, for asking to read it and then agreeing to do machete beta... not to mention the shipment of British candy and British music and the funniest picture-stalk I've ever seen.
> 
> Cofax, who asked all the right questions about the later chapters, who wouldn't let me forget to give Mulder a little continuity and resolution, too, and who nicely ignored my whining and bitching when it then took me twice as long to write the chapters.
> 
> And last but never least, my beta groups, Babyfishmouth and Yes, Virginia, for patient support above and beyond the call of duty, for the prudent application of pointy sticks, for coming up with upwards of a hundred bizarre title suggestions, and for putting me on trial for refusing to write smut. I am still honored and amazed to be surrounded by such a brilliant bunch of writers. This Bud's for you.
> 
> Magdeleine   
> March 4, 1999 - July 6, 2000
> 
> P.S. No parrots were harmed in the making of this fic.


End file.
